Sales Tax Nexus When Your Inventory Sits in Florida

By Bernardo Campelo, Forbes Business Council E-Commerce Leader, Amazon SPN Certified provider, Amazon SP-API authorized partner, and Founder of PrepVia.

A seller emailed me in March with a question his accountant had just handed him. The accountant wanted a list of every state where his inventory physically sat during 2026. The seller did not understand why that mattered. Amazon collected sales tax on his orders every day, so in his mind the subject was already closed.

It was the third version of that same question I had heard since January, and it kept surfacing. By June, a Florida seller forum thread built on the identical confusion had collected dozens of replies in two days. The pattern was always the same. A seller stores inventory in a Florida warehouse, sees Amazon collecting tax on the checkout page, and concludes the state has nothing left to ask of him.

That conclusion skips a step. Amazon collecting tax on a sale it facilitates is one fact. Whether the state where your inventory sits considers you registered, and whether that registration covers every channel you sell through, is a separate fact. This is not tax or legal advice, and nothing here replaces a conversation with a licensed accountant. It is the mechanism explained in plain terms, so that conversation starts from the right question.

What Nexus Means, and Why It Is Not About How Much You Sell

Nexus is the legal word for a connection between a business and a state, strong enough that the state can require the business to register, collect tax, and file returns. Most sellers first hear the word attached to economic nexus, the threshold introduced broadly after the 2018 Wayfair decision, measured in dollars of sales or number of transactions sold into a state.

Economic nexus is a revenue test. Cross a dollar threshold selling into a state, even with zero physical presence there, and the state can require you to register. Physical nexus is older and simpler. It does not measure revenue at all. It measures presence: property, employees, or inventory physically located in the state, on any given day, regardless of how many dollars you sold there.

The distinction matters because sellers who track economic nexus dashboards closely often stop watching for the physical trigger entirely. A single pallet sitting in a Florida warehouse is not a revenue event. It is property in the state, and in most states, property in the state is the entire test, with no dollar minimum attached to it at all.

Why a Third-Party Warehouse Creates Physical Nexus

A prep center or a fulfillment warehouse is not a neutral pass-through for tax purposes. When you send inventory to a Florida address to be received, labeled, and forwarded to Amazon, that inventory is your property, sitting inside the state, under your direction, for however many hours or days it takes to move through receiving and prep.

Whose Inventory It Is Matters

The nexus question attaches to the owner of the goods, not to the warehouse operator. A prep center that receives inventory on behalf of many sellers does not absorb anyone else's nexus exposure. Each seller's own inventory, sitting in that same building, is evaluated against that seller's own tax profile in that state, one seller at a time.

This is why the question of whether storing inventory with a 3PL creates nexus does not have one universal answer written into the warehouse's own registration. It depends on the specific state's rule for inventory nexus, which varies, and on how long your particular inventory sits there, which also varies by shipment. Ask a licensed accountant to evaluate your specific pattern of storage, not a general rule pulled from a forum thread.

Aggregators managing inventory for several brands under one roof face this same question multiplied across every brand they operate, not just once, since each brand entity is generally evaluated on its own facts.

What a Marketplace Facilitator Actually Collects

Florida, like most states, has a marketplace facilitator law. Under that law, a marketplace like Amazon that meets the state's threshold is required to collect and remit sales tax on the sales it facilitates through its own platform, on the seller's behalf, for that specific transaction.

The word that matters in that sentence is facilitates. Amazon collects tax on a sale that happened inside Amazon's own marketplace, through Amazon's own checkout, using Amazon's own systems to calculate the rate and file the remittance. That is a real, verifiable, useful fact. It is also a narrower fact than most sellers assume it to be.

A marketplace facilitator law answers the collection question for one channel. It does not answer the registration question for the seller as a whole, and it does not extend to a sale that happens outside that specific marketplace, no matter how similar that other sale looks to the one Amazon just collected tax on.

What Stays Your Own Obligation

Two situations commonly fall outside what a marketplace facilitator covers, and both are common among sellers who also store inventory with a prep center in Florida.

The first is your own website. A seller running a Shopify store, a WooCommerce site, or any direct checkout that Amazon does not touch is not covered by Amazon's facilitator collection. If that site sells to a customer in a state where you have nexus, from a Florida stored pallet or otherwise, the collection and remittance for that sale generally falls to you, the seller, not to the marketplace.

The second is any additional channel without a registered facilitator handling that specific sale. Some platforms are marketplace facilitators in every state that has the law. Others are facilitators in some states and not others, or facilitators only above a certain size. A wholesale sale negotiated directly with a buyer, invoiced outside any marketplace and common among wholesalers and distributors selling both direct and through Amazon, is rarely covered by facilitator collection at all, regardless of where the goods physically sat before they shipped.

None of this means every seller with a Florida pallet owes Florida sales tax on every sale. It means the answer depends on the channel, and a single blanket assumption, that Amazon handles it, does not hold across every channel a seller runs.

Registration Even When the Tax Due Is Zero

This is the part sellers find least intuitive, and it is the part worth bringing to an accountant directly. Nexus and tax due are two separate questions. A seller can have nexus in a state, be required to register there, and still owe that state zero dollars in a given filing period, because every taxable sale into that state happened through a facilitator that already collected the tax.

Registering With a Zero Return

Registration does not automatically generate a tax bill. In states that require it, a registered seller files a return every period, reports the sales, and reports the tax already collected by the facilitator against those same sales as an offset. The result on the line that says amount due can be zero, filed correctly, on time, every period. What changes is not the dollar amount. What changes is whether the state has a record of you at all, and whether an audit years later finds a seller who never registered, or a seller who registered and filed a zero return on schedule.

Some states specifically exempt a seller from registering at all when every one of their sales into that state runs through a marketplace facilitator. Other states still require registration once physical nexus exists, regardless of how the sales are split across channels. The rule is not the same in every state, and it changes. A zero dollar tax bill is not proof that no obligation exists, it is simply proof that the facilitator already paid the tax on the sales it touched. This is exactly the kind of question that belongs in front of a licensed accountant, stated with your specific facts: which states hold your inventory, and which channels you sell through in each one.

The Foreign Seller Case

A seller based outside the United States who imports inventory into a Florida warehouse faces the identical physical nexus question, with one added layer. Sales tax nexus is a state law question, separate from federal import compliance, separate from income tax treaty questions, and separate from whether the seller has a United States entity at all.

A foreign seller storing inventory in Florida can have Florida sales tax nexus the same way a domestic seller does, purely from the presence of that inventory, regardless of where the company is incorporated or where its owners live. Being a foreign entity does not exempt inventory from the physical presence test, and it does not exempt the seller from the registration question that follows from it.

Foreign sellers importing through a bonded warehouse or a prep center arrangement should raise the sales tax nexus question in the same conversation as their importer of record arrangement, because both questions turn on the same fact: inventory physically present in the United States, under whose name, and for how long. An accountant licensed in the state where the inventory sits, not a general international tax adviser alone, is the right person to answer the sales tax half of that question.

Channel by Channel: Who Collects, What Remains Yours

The clearest way to see where the obligation actually sits is channel by channel, not state by state. Every seller's mix of channels is different, and the table below is a starting point for the conversation with your accountant, not a substitute for it.

Read the middle column and the right column together for each row you sell through. A channel where a facilitator collects the tax is not the same as a channel that removes you from the state's records entirely, and a wholesale sale under a resale certificate is not automatically exempt if the paperwork behind it is not on file when a state asks for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does storing inventory in a Florida prep center automatically create sales tax nexus?

In most states, yes, physical presence of inventory is enough on its own, with no dollar threshold attached to it, though the specific rule and any exemption depends on the state and changes over time. This is general information, not tax advice. Confirm your own situation, including how long inventory sits and under what arrangement, with a licensed accountant.

If Amazon collects sales tax on my orders, do I still need to register in Florida?

Possibly, yes. Amazon collecting tax as a marketplace facilitator answers the collection question for sales made through Amazon's own platform. It does not automatically answer whether the state still requires you to register because your inventory physically sits there. Some states waive registration when every sale runs through a facilitator, others do not, and the answer depends on your specific facts. Ask a licensed accountant.

Do I owe sales tax on sales through my own website if my inventory is in Florida?

Generally, if you have nexus in a state and Amazon is not the marketplace facilitating that specific sale, the responsibility to collect and remit falls on you as the seller, not on Amazon. A sale through your own website checkout is a common example of a channel a facilitator law does not cover. Confirm with your accountant which states this applies to given where your inventory is stored.

What is the difference between physical nexus and economic nexus?

Economic nexus is measured by revenue or transaction count sold into a state, introduced broadly after the 2018 Wayfair decision. Physical nexus is measured by presence, property, employees, or inventory located in the state, and in most states it does not require any dollar threshold at all. Inventory sitting in a Florida prep center is a physical nexus question, separate from how many dollars you sold there.

Can I owe zero dollars in tax and still be required to register?

Yes, and this is one of the most misunderstood parts of the system. Registration and tax due are separate questions. A seller can have nexus, be required to register in a state, and file a return showing zero dollars owed in a given period, because every taxable sale into that state already went through a facilitator. The registration itself, not a tax bill, is what some states require regardless.

Does being a foreign seller change my sales tax nexus obligation in Florida?

No, not in the way many foreign sellers assume. Sales tax nexus from stored inventory generally applies regardless of where the company is incorporated or where its owners live. A foreign seller storing inventory in a Florida warehouse faces the same physical presence question a domestic seller does, alongside separate federal import and importer of record questions. Confirm both with the appropriate licensed professionals.

Who should I ask to confirm my actual sales tax obligation?

A licensed accountant or a sales tax specialist, given your specific states of storage, your specific sales channels, and your specific volume in each. Nothing in this article is tax or legal advice, and a prep center can describe where your inventory physically sits and for how long, information your accountant will need, but it cannot tell you what you owe or where you need to register.

Final Take

None of this is designed to alarm a seller who has been storing inventory in Florida in good faith. It is designed to close the gap between what a marketplace facilitator actually does and what sellers assume it does, because that gap is where the March email and the June forum thread both came from.

Amazon collecting sales tax on an order is a real, useful fact. It answers the collection question for one channel, on one transaction, at the moment of that specific sale. It was never designed to answer the separate question of whether the state where your inventory physically sits considers you registered, and it does not extend to your own website, to a wholesale invoice, or to any channel outside Amazon's own marketplace.

The seller who emailed me in March did the right thing. He asked his accountant, instead of assuming the answer from a forum thread or a competitor's guess. That is the entire recommendation here: bring your specific states, your specific channels, and your specific storage pattern to a licensed accountant, and let the registration question get answered with your actual facts instead of a rule of thumb.

We are not accountants, and this article is not tax advice. What we can document accurately, in writing, is where your inventory physically sits inside our Florida warehouse and for how long, the information your accountant will actually need to answer the nexus question for you.