Key takeaways
- The short answer: usually not, until your sales into a specific state cross that state's economic-nexus threshold. Below the threshold, a remote seller generally has no duty to collect that state's sales tax. Above it, you register and collect in that state.
- US sales tax is not a tariff — it's a completely separate tax. Import duty is federal and charged at the border on the goods; sales tax is charged by a state at the point of sale to the consumer. If you just finished sorting out de minimis and tariffs, this is a different line to understand.
- There is no single federal US sales tax. 45 states plus D.C. impose one; Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon have none, and Alaska has no state-level sales tax (some Alaska localities levy a local one). So "US sales tax" is really 46 separate rulebooks.
- Since South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), you can owe sales tax in a state where you have no office, staff, or inventory. Economic nexus is triggered by how much you sell into a state — not by physical presence. Being based outside the US does not, on its own, exempt you.
- Marketplaces already collect for you — your own store is your job. Under marketplace-facilitator laws, Amazon, Etsy, and eBay collect and remit sales tax on the sales they facilitate. Your own Shopify or direct sales are your responsibility, and marketplace sales usually still count toward your nexus math.
- A US virtual mailbox address does not, by itself, create nexus. Physical-presence nexus comes from inventory, employees, or an office in a state — the classic trap being Amazon FBA stock stored in a warehouse in that state, not the address where your mail is forwarded.
Do foreign sellers need to collect US sales tax? The short answer
If you sell into the United States from outside it, here is the honest short answer: most of the time you don't have to collect US sales tax until your sales into a particular state cross that state's economic-nexus threshold — and even then, you register and collect in that one state, not "the US" as a whole.
Two things make this different from every other US tax a cross-border seller runs into:
It's per-state, not federal. There is no national US sales tax. Each state writes its own rule, so "do foreign sellers need to collect US sales tax" doesn't have a single yes/no answer — it has up to 46 answers (the 45 states plus D.C. that impose one), and you only owe in the states where you've actually crossed the line.
It's triggered by your sales, not your address. This is the part that surprises people. Before 2018, a state could only make you collect sales tax if you had a physical presence there. That changed with South Dakota v. Wayfair, decided by the US Supreme Court on June 21, 2018 (5–4), which overturned the older physical-presence rule from Quill (1992). South Dakota's law — that a remote seller has nexus once it passes more than $100,000 in sales OR 200 or more separate transactions into the state — became the template, and by January 1, 2023 every state with a sales tax enforced some version of it. So a seller based abroad with no US office, no US staff, and no US inventory can still be required to collect a state's sales tax purely on volume.
The practical read: being outside the US doesn't exempt you, but staying under each state's threshold generally means no collection duty in that state. The rest of this brief is how to tell which line you're near, and which of these obligations the marketplace already handles for you.
First, separate the three US taxes people keep merging
A lot of the panic here comes from stacking three unrelated taxes into one worry. They hit at different moments, go to different governments, and follow different rules. Keeping them apart is most of the battle.
| Import duty / tariff | Sales tax | Income tax (and 1099 reporting) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who charges it | Federal — US Customs and Border Protection | A state (and sometimes a city/county) | Federal — the IRS (states may add their own) |
| What it's on | The goods, based on classification and origin | The retail sale to a US consumer | Your business income / profit |
| When it hits | When the parcel crosses the border | At the point of sale, per transaction | At filing time, annually |
| Who's usually on the hook | The importer of record | The seller, once nexus is triggered — or the marketplace | The business earning the income |
| What it is not | Not a sales tax | Not a tariff or a customs duty | Not either of the other two |
Read across the row for "sales tax" and the distinction from a tariff is clean: a tariff is charged once, by the federal government, when your goods enter the country — that's the world of de minimis and Section 122, which we cover in why the US de minimis exemption isn't coming back and the Section 122 tariff expiring July 24, 2026. Sales tax is charged separately, by a state, each time you sell to a consumer there — and it has nothing to do with the border. The third column, federal income reporting, is a different regime again; the form side of it (1099-K versus the new 1099-NEC) is in the 2026 1099 threshold changes founders keep confusing.
The reason to be strict about this: the fixes are different. Nothing you do about tariffs changes your sales-tax exposure, and registering for sales tax does nothing about duty at the border.
Who this affects: remote sellers shipping into the US
Sales-tax nexus lands hardest on a specific profile of remote seller:
- Direct-to-consumer sellers on their own storefront (Shopify, WooCommerce, a custom site). This is the group most exposed, because on your own store you are the seller of record — there's no marketplace collecting on your behalf.
- Sellers with meaningful US volume in a single state. Economic nexus is measured state-by-state, so a seller doing steady numbers into California or Texas can cross a threshold there long before their overall US sales feel "big."
- Amazon FBA sellers. FBA is a special case for a reason we'll get to: if Amazon stores your inventory in a warehouse in a given state, that stored stock can create physical nexus in that state — a separate trigger from the sales-threshold one.
- Multi-channel sellers. If you sell the same catalogue on a marketplace and your own site, the two channels interact — marketplace sales can push you over a state's threshold, changing what you owe on your direct sales into that state.
If you sell purely through marketplaces and nowhere else, your direct collection duties are often limited — but "often" is not "never," and it depends on the states and the way each one counts marketplace sales. More on that below.
What it means for you: three things to work out
1. Which states you're actually near a threshold in
You don't monitor all 46 rulebooks — you watch the states where your US sales concentrate. The most common threshold is $100,000 in annual sales into a state, sometimes paired with a 200-transaction alternative. Some states set the bar higher: California, Texas, and New York use $500,000 (Texas measures total revenue with no transaction count; New York pairs its $500,000 with a 100-transaction test), and Alabama and Mississippi use $250,000, among others.
Two cautions, because these numbers move:
- The 200-transaction test is being phased out. Several states have dropped it recently — Alaska, Utah, and Illinois among them — leaving a dollar threshold only. A rule that was true last year may not be this year.
- Treat the figures above as illustrative, not a settled list. Thresholds, transaction counts, and effective dates change state by state and year by year. Before you rely on a number, check the department of revenue for each state you sell meaningfully into.
2. What the marketplace already handles — and what it doesn't
If you sell on Amazon, Etsy, or eBay, a big chunk of this is already done for you. Every state with a sales tax now has a marketplace-facilitator law requiring the platform to collect and remit sales tax on the sales it facilitates. Here's the split that matters:
| Marketplace sales (Amazon / Etsy / eBay) | Your own store (Shopify / direct) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who collects the sales tax | The marketplace collects and remits it | You do, once you have nexus in that state |
| Your registration | Often not required just for marketplace sales | Required in each state where you've crossed the threshold |
| Counts toward your nexus? | In most states, yes — marketplace sales still count toward your economic-nexus math | Yes |
The nuance in that last row is the one that catches people: marketplace sales usually still count toward your own economic nexus in a state. So if your Amazon volume alone pushes you past a state's threshold, you can end up required to register and collect on your direct sales into that state — even though Amazon is handling the Amazon orders. The platform covers its own transactions; it doesn't cover your storefront.
3. Whether being a non-resident changes the answer
It generally doesn't provide an exemption. Economic nexus is written around sales into the state — the legal term is a "remote seller," and a seller based abroad shipping into Texas is as much a remote seller as one in Oregon shipping into Texas. There is no "we're foreign, so we're out" carve-out in the Wayfair framework.
What does differ in practice is your channel mix. Many cross-border sellers run most of their US volume through marketplaces, which absorbs the collection duty on those sales — so a non-US seller's direct obligations are often narrower than the raw thresholds suggest. But that's a function of how you sell, not of your passport.
This is general information about US state sales tax, not tax or legal advice — sales-tax nexus is genuinely state-specific and changes often, so confirm your own situation with a US sales-tax professional (a state-and-local-tax specialist) before you register, or decide not to.
The address angle: your US mailbox doesn't create nexus — your inventory might
Here's a myth worth killing directly, because it changes what a lot of sellers think they can and can't do: getting a US virtual mailbox address does not, by itself, create sales-tax nexus.
Nexus has two doors. One is economic nexus — the sales-threshold trigger this whole brief is about. The other is physical-presence nexus, which comes from having something real in a state: inventory stored there, employees working there, or an office you operate there. A mail-forwarding address is none of those. It receives and scans your mail; it isn't a warehouse and it isn't staff.
The one place to be careful — and this is the classic trap — is Amazon FBA inventory. When a marketplace stores your stock in a fulfillment center in a given state, that stored inventory can create physical-presence nexus in that state, regardless of your sales volume. Whether it does, and in which states, depends on the state's rules and on where your goods actually sit, so this is exactly the kind of thing to confirm with a sales-tax professional rather than assume. The point for the address question: it's the inventory that can create the physical footprint, not the mailbox on your paperwork.
So the setup that a cross-border seller usually wants is boring in the best way. A US-facing address — through SaveOffice, our US partner (Auteur doesn't operate the US service directly) — gives you a US point of contact for returns, carrier notices, and marketplace verification, without pretending to be a customs address or a nexus-creating presence. That's the whole point of keeping it boring: the address does the administrative job. It doesn't move you onto a state's tax radar, and it doesn't clear your goods at the border — those are two other boxes, with two other owners.
FAQ
What is sales tax nexus for online sellers? Nexus is the connection between your business and a US state that's strong enough to let that state require you to collect its sales tax. It comes in two forms: physical nexus (inventory, employees, or an office in the state) and economic nexus (crossing the state's sales threshold — commonly $100,000 in annual sales into that state, sometimes with a transaction count). Since South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018), economic nexus alone is enough, so you can have nexus in a state you've never set foot in.
Do foreign or international sellers have to pay US sales tax? Being based outside the US is not an exemption. Economic nexus is based on your sales into a state, and a "remote seller" based abroad is treated like any other remote seller. In practice, whether you actually have to collect depends on whether you've crossed each state's threshold and how much of your volume runs through marketplaces (which collect on their own sales). And to be precise: sales tax is collected from the buyer, not paid out of your margin — your job is registering and remitting once you have nexus.
Does my US virtual mailbox address create sales tax nexus? On its own, no. A mail-forwarding address isn't inventory, employees, or an office, so it generally doesn't create physical-presence nexus. What can create physical nexus is stock stored in a state — most commonly Amazon FBA inventory sitting in a fulfillment center there. So it's worth separating "where my mail goes" (the mailbox) from "where my goods physically sit" (the potential trigger). Confirm the specifics with a sales-tax professional.
Do Amazon or Etsy collect US sales tax for me? Yes, for the sales they facilitate. Every US sales-tax state has a marketplace-facilitator law that makes platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay collect and remit sales tax on marketplace orders. What they don't cover is your own store — direct Shopify or website sales are your responsibility once you have nexus. And in most states, your marketplace sales still count toward your economic-nexus threshold, which can pull your direct sales into a collection duty.
Is US sales tax the same as an import duty or a tariff? No — they're separate taxes at separate moments. A tariff / import duty is federal, charged once when your goods cross the US border. Sales tax is charged by a state, at the point of sale, each time you sell to a consumer there. Losing the de minimis exemption changed the tariff side; it did nothing to your sales-tax exposure. They move on different tracks and have different fixes.
Bottom line
For a non-US seller, US sales tax usually starts to matter only when your sales into a specific state cross that state's economic-nexus threshold — most often around $100,000, but it varies and changes, so watch the states where your US volume concentrates and confirm the current rules with a professional. It's a state tax, separate from any tariff, and marketplaces already collect on the orders they facilitate — leaving your own store as the piece you handle.
Sales-tax nexus follows your economic footprint in each state — the volume you sell and the inventory you store — not the address where your mail lands. A mailbox doesn't put you on a state's radar; crossing its threshold does. If you want the address layer sorted without confusing it for a tax event, a US-facing address through SaveOffice — our US partner — gives you a place for returns, carrier notices, and marketplace verification while your accountant handles the thresholds. See how the US address option works and keep the setup layer separate from the tax question.
