For the first time, Amazon's MN tax will be collected to users of the retailing company, following a trend of tax collecting in different states throughout the United States, a move that might mean that the company is expanding across the country with new physical locations.
The new Amazon MN tax policy follows the trend of other 21 states across the US, including Arizona, New York, Texas and Wisconsin, among others. Usually, a retailer will only have to collect taxes when it has a physical presence in the state, which has worked to Amazon's advantage (and to the advantage of many other stores that will only sale online). In any case, the Amazon MN taxes will begin being collected come the first of October.
According to the state's reports, Minnesota loses around $400 million a year in uncollected sales taxes because online stores that are not located within the state's borders are tax-exempt. As a matter of fact, Amazon MN tax was a small issue in itself, as the Star Tribune reports that last year Amazon went to great lengths to avoid collecting taxes in Minnesota, as it cut ties with their Minnesota-based affiliates (like bloggers and deal sites) when a new law was about to come to the light: starting from July 2013, it was required that online merchants collected taxes if they had affiliates of the sort based in the states. This is a move that Amazon had made in 10 different states.
The new Amazon MN tax comes as a surprise to analysts, who suggest different reasons behind the decision, like Amazon's possible desire to create a Minnesota-based warehouse soon, or even something as mundane as opening a corporate office in the state or even expanding Amazon's cloud services (Amazon Web Services) to now have offices in the state.
