Amazon Tutorials

Amazon Sales Tax by State and City

Last updated -

May 8, 2026

Article Summary

⚪ Amazon collects and remits sales tax for FBA orders in marketplace facilitator states, but the data sits inside settlement reports with no native state or city grouping.

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⚪ Gorilla ROI loads your Amazon tax transaction data directly into Google Sheets, organized by state or city, through a point-and-click interface with no CSV exports required.

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⚪ The output shows ordered revenue and tax collected per location for any date range, giving your CPA a clean quarterly summary in under 10 minutes instead of a day and a half of manual reconciliation.

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March 2017. Our accountant emailed asking for prior year sales totals broken down by state. I logged into Seller Central expecting a clean report to exist.

There is no clean report. Sales data sits in the Business Report. Tax data sits in the Settlement report. The two use different date filters, different row structures, and different geographic detail. Getting both organized by state required downloading each file, reconciling them manually, and building a pivot table from scratch across thousands of transaction rows.

A day and a half to answer a question my accountant needed in 10 minutes.

We have been selling on Amazon since 2012. The quarterly tax reconciliation problem has existed for every single one of those years. Hundreds of teams have since connected their Amazon accounts through Gorilla ROI, syncing over $313 million in Amazon sales through a single Google Sheets connection.

That's the type of know how and experience we bring as we talk day in day out with serious sellers on what they want and need.

Why Amazon's Tax Reports Break Before You Can Use Them

Amazon generates tax data on every transaction. The problem is that the data is stored in a format that serves Amazon's ledger, not your quarterly review.

| Root Cause | What Happens | Financial Cost | |---|---|---| | Tax data has no native state or city grouping | Settlement reports contain one row per transaction. Getting state totals requires downloading, filtering, and pivoting thousands of rows manually every quarter. | 3 to 8 hours of spreadsheet work per quarter to produce one clean state-level tax summary. | | FBA and FBM tax obligations are mixed in raw exports | Amazon collects and remits for FBA orders in marketplace facilitator states. FBM orders remain your responsibility. Manual exports do not separate the two by default. | Filing or estimating based on combined FBA and FBM totals overstates your liability in states where Amazon already remits on your behalf. | | State exposure is invisible without grouping | Raw transaction data does not surface which states represent your largest revenue concentration or tax exposure at a glance. | You discover a state liability gap at filing time instead of managing it quarterly, when the penalties are already accruing. |

Amazon Collects the Tax. It Does Not Organize It for You.

Amazon acts as marketplace facilitator for FBA orders across US states where the legislation applies. For qualifying transactions, Amazon collects sales tax from the buyer and remits it to the state. You do not write that check.

The gap is that visibility does not come with the collection. Amazon's Tax Document Library in Seller Central holds reconciled filing data, but it takes manual effort to extract a working state summary from it. The Business Report and the Settlement report use different structures. Combining them into one organized view by state or city is work you or your accountant absorbs every single quarter.

Economic nexus adds another layer. The South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling in 2018 established that states can require collection from out-of-state sellers based on revenue or transaction volume alone. Your CPA determines your actual nexus obligations. What Gorilla ROI gives you is the organized revenue and tax data by state and city your CPA needs to make that determination without starting from raw exports.

Check your Tax Settings inside Seller Central to confirm which states Amazon is currently covering on your behalf. The coverage list expands over time and the settings page is the authoritative source.

What Gorilla ROI Loads Into Google Sheets

Gorilla ROI connects to the Amazon SP-API and loads your tax transaction data directly into Google Sheets through a point-and-click sidebar. You select your Amazon account, set the date range, choose whether to group by state or city, and trigger the load. The structured rows land in your designated sheet tab in seconds.

No CSV download. No column cleanup. No pivot table rebuild. The data lands in the same column structure every load, which means the summary your CPA receives in Q1 looks identical to the one they receive in Q4.

One important limitation: Gorilla ROI imports transactions daily. Returns processed after the original transaction date are not retroactively reconciled in the loaded data. The output carries a +/- 3 to 7% variance against Amazon's fully reconciled totals. Use it for quarterly exposure estimates and CPA prep. For actual filing numbers, export directly from Amazon's Tax Document Library in Seller Central.

For teams connecting all Amazon financial data into one sheet, the full data architecture is covered in the Amazon seller data to Google Sheets guide.

What the Tax Data Output Looks Like in Google Sheets

When Gorilla ROI loads your Amazon tax data, each row in Google Sheets represents one location for the selected period.

| Column Name | What It Shows | How to Use It | |---|---|---| | state | The US state orders shipped to during the period | Identify your highest-revenue states and confirm which ones Amazon is collecting for | | city | The city within the state | Required for local filing in states with city-level tax obligations | | ordered_revenue | Total revenue for orders shipping to that location | Estimate state-level gross exposure before fees and refunds | | tax_collected | Tax amount Amazon collected for that location and period | Shows what Amazon has already remitted on your behalf | | marketplace | The Amazon marketplace the data is scoped to | Filter when running data across multiple connected marketplaces |

A state that does not appear in the output had no tax collection activity in the selected period. States where Amazon does not collect on your behalf require you to track and remit independently. Your CPA uses the tax_collected column to separate Amazon's remittance from your remaining obligation.

For advanced users who want cell-level control, Gorilla ROI includes tax and transaction related data with GORILLA_FINANCES(), a native Google Sheets formula that pulls the same data into a specific cell with custom period parameters. Full documentation is at help.gorillaroi.com.

Quarterly Tax Review: Without Gorilla ROI vs With Gorilla ROI

| Step | Without Gorilla ROI | With Gorilla ROI | |---|---|---| | Get state-level tax totals | Download settlement report, filter transaction rows, group by ship-to state, build pivot table | Point-and-click load grouped by state. Structured rows land in seconds. | | Get city totals for local filing | Repeat the process with city-level filtering across thousands of transaction rows | Change grouping parameter to city in the sidebar. Same load time. | | Set a custom date range | Adjust date filters manually across multiple report downloads | Set start and end date in the sidebar to match your filing period exactly. | | Separate FBA from FBM obligations | Requires manual order-type filtering before grouping by state | FBA transactions load by default. FBM requires a separate order report cross-reference. | | Time per quarterly review | 3 to 8 hours to produce a clean state summary from raw settlement data | Under 10 minutes to load, verify row counts, and share with your CPA. |

Key Terms

| Term | Definition | |---|---| | Marketplace facilitator | A marketplace facilitator is a platform that collects and remits sales tax on behalf of third-party sellers for qualifying transactions. Amazon acts as marketplace facilitator for FBA orders in US states where the legislation applies. FBM orders remain the seller's responsibility regardless of state. | | Economic nexus | Economic nexus is the threshold of sales activity in a state that obligates a seller to collect and remit sales tax without a physical presence. Following the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, most US states enforce thresholds based on annual revenue or transaction count into that state, typically $100,000 in revenue or 200 transactions. | | Tax Document Library | Amazon's Tax Document Library is the section inside Seller Central containing reconciled tax reports for completed settlement periods. It is the authoritative source for actual filing numbers and should be used in place of any third-party data estimate when submitting a tax return. |

FAQ

| Question | Answer | |---|---| | How do I get Amazon sales tax data by state into Google Sheets? | Gorilla ROI loads your Amazon tax transaction data into Google Sheets grouped by state or city through a point-and-click sidebar. Connect your Amazon account, select the tax report, set the date range and grouping, and trigger the load. The data lands in a structured table with ordered revenue and tax collected per location. No CSV export or formula knowledge required. | | Can I use Gorilla ROI tax data for filing my taxes? | The Gorilla ROI tax data output carries a +/- 3 to 7% variance because daily imports do not retroactively reconcile returns. Use it for quarterly exposure estimates and CPA prep. For actual filing, export the reconciled tax data from Amazon's Tax Document Library in Seller Central. | | Does Amazon collect sales tax on behalf of FBA sellers? | Amazon collects and remits sales tax for FBA orders in US states where marketplace facilitator legislation applies. FBM orders are your responsibility regardless of state. Check Tax Settings in Seller Central to confirm which states Amazon is currently covering for your account. For a full breakdown of FBA tax obligations, see the Amazon FBA sales tax guide at gorillaroi.com/blog/amazon-fba-sales-tax-sellers. | | How do I get city-level tax data for local filing? | Set the grouping parameter to city in the Gorilla ROI sidebar when loading your tax data. The output delivers one row per city for the selected period, showing ordered revenue and tax collected per location. This gives you the city-level breakdown required for states where you file local taxes monthly. | | What is economic nexus and how does it affect Amazon sellers? | Economic nexus is the obligation to collect and remit sales tax in a state based on revenue or transaction volume without a physical presence. Following the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, most US states set thresholds at $100,000 in annual revenue or 200 transactions. Gorilla ROI's state-level output shows your revenue concentration by state, which your CPA uses to determine where nexus obligations exist. | | What is the difference between tax collected and tax owed in the Gorilla ROI output? | Tax collected is the amount Amazon has already collected from buyers on FBA orders in marketplace facilitator states. Tax owed is your liability for FBM orders, states not covered by Amazon's program, and any economic nexus obligations you carry independently. The Gorilla ROI output shows tax_collected per state. Your remaining obligation requires cross-referencing your FBM order data and nexus status with your CPA. | | Does Gorilla ROI support non-US Amazon marketplaces for tax data? | Gorilla ROI connects to Amazon marketplaces across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Tax data loads for any connected marketplace using the same sidebar interface. Set the marketplace parameter to the region you want to query when triggering the load. |

Amazon Tax Quarterly Review Checklist

Drop this into Slack at the start of each quarter before sending anything to your CPA.

Data Load

Open Gorilla ROI sidebar in Google Sheets
Select Amazon account and tax report type
Set date range to match the full quarter
Load grouped by STATE for the state summary
Load grouped by CITY for states where you file locally
Verify row count covers all active marketplaces

FBA vs FBM Check

Confirm which states Amazon is covering in Tax Settings in Seller Central
Identify states in the output where Amazon is not the collector
Pull FBM order totals separately for states not covered by Amazon's collection

State Exposure Review

Flag any states where ordered_revenue crossed $100,000 year to date
Flag any states approaching 200 transactions year to date
Share the state summary with your CPA before the filing deadline

Before Filing

Export reconciled tax data from Amazon's Tax Document Library for the filing period
Confirm Gorilla ROI estimates align within expected +/- 3 to 7% variance
Do not file based on Gorilla ROI output alone

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