Before that was the case, sales tax only was to be collected if the company had a presence in that state. This was earlier in Amazon's history where they didn'

Before that was the case, sales tax only was to be collected if the company had a presence in that state. This was earlier in Amazon's history where they didn't have a warehouse everywhere and so many cases online sellers didn't collect sales tax. In the event that you buy something from somewhere else and no sales tax is collected, a "use tax" is to be collected... and most people weren't reporting this. For example https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-usetax.aspx https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-usetax.aspx This hits states that have sales tax but no income tax hardest (Washington and Texas being the two that come to mind most readily). This changed in 2018 with South Dakota vs Wayfair - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc. Amazon was initially opposed to this previously but as they grew it became apparent that they would have a presence in each state and so were for it... as it adds costs to all the small companies to also properly collect sales tax for wherever they sell. From the Wiki article: > A year from the decision, nearly all states that collected sales tax had modified their laws to include interstate commerce taxes; however, in many of these states, the updated laws did not include any threshold limits on when such taxes can be collected. Small to medium businesses may find the cost of auditing their sales for each state to far outweigh the amount of tax actually owed and forgo the process; and similarly, states looking to collect these taxes may find the cost of prosecuting against the smaller business to outweigh the benefit. It is expected that a raft of lawsuits related to these new tax laws from South Dakota will occur from 2019 through 2023.