Does Amazon Warehouse CLT2 Create Sales Tax Nexus for FBA Sellers?
by November 1, 2020
We recently got word that some Amazon FBA sellers are shipping to the CLT2 warehouse located in Charlotte, NC. After some investigation, my educated guess is that this facility is another Amazon redistribution center, and not an Amazon fulfillment center.
What’s up with Amazon Warehouse CLT2?
News outlets started covering CLT2 last July, just a couple of months after Amazon announced that Charlotte would be covered by free same-day Prime shipping.
Rumors had it that CLT2 would be North Carolina’s first Amazon fulfillment center, meaning that some FBA sellers might have sales tax nexus in North Carolina when the facility opened.
However, I don’t think this is the case. According to an article in the Charlotte Business Journal, the new facility is only 387,000 square feet, which is much smaller than most Amazon fulfillment centers (which are generally around ~800,000 square feet.)
Further, though this facility opened in November, at TaxJar we haven’t shown any items shipping from this facility to customers. Normally, when we see this pattern, it means that the facility is either a redistribution center or a sort center – both of which do not create nexus, in our understanding, because the items are in transit and not stored for sale.
If you haven’t dealt with CLT2 yet, another example of an Amazon redistribution center is MDW2 in Joliet, Illinois.
Crowdsourcing Amazon Warehouse Info
Of course, the same Charlotte Business Journal article also talks about how this facility will have three phases. So there is a chance that CLT2 is simply not serving as a fulfillment center yet! This is one reason we rely on you to help us crowdsource Amazon fulfillment center information.
To find out where Amazon is currently storing your products, you can always check your Inventory Event Detail report. If you see products lingering in CLT2 rather than being redistributed to other Amazon fulfillment centers, that may mean that CLT2 is being used as a fulfillment center.
I hope this helps explain my thinking as to why CLT is a redistribution center rather than a fulfillment center. Do you have questions or some new information to add? Please start the conversation in the comments!
