Amazon FBA services for the Americas: what actually blocks a Vietnamese factory

The US has no VAT — but that is not the same as no tax

In Europe the first job is tax, and the first line has to be right: wherever Amazon stores your stock, you need a VAT number in that country. OSS does not replace that obligation — OSS is for declaring cross-border distance sales to consumers. On top of that an EORI, which is a customs identifier and not a VAT number, then packaging EPR country by country: LUCID/VerpackG registration in Germany, producer registration plus membership of a collection scheme in Spain, Citeo and the ADEME unique identifier in France. We run that whole stack for Matelier, our own matcha brand; the detail is in our post on Amazon FBA services for Europe. The US is different: there is no federal value-added tax, only sales tax at state and local level. Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon levy no statewide sales tax; Alaska has none either, but allows local jurisdictions to impose their own.

After South Dakota v. Wayfair in 2018, states passed marketplace facilitator laws one after another, requiring the marketplace itself to collect and remit sales tax on behalf of third-party sellers. Amazon now collects and remits sales tax on marketplace orders in the states that have such a law. For a factory selling only through Amazon this is good news: you do not register for tax in each state the way you register for VAT in each European country. But do not read that as "no obligations at all". Marketplace collection covers sales tax only, not other state-level taxes such as state income tax or gross receipts tax. Inventory sitting in an FBA warehouse in a state can create a taxable presence there, some states still require registration even where the marketplace collects, and the moment you open your own website the obligation comes back to you under each state's economic nexus thresholds — those thresholds differ by state and they change, so they have to be checked state by state.

The second layer is income tax. A Vietnamese entity selling into the US may incur federal income tax obligations if its activity is treated as a US trade or business. Vietnam and the United States signed a double taxation treaty in 2015, but as at August 2026 it has not entered into force, so do not assume treaty protection; check its status before relying on any treaty benefit. At minimum, Amazon requires every seller to complete a tax interview; foreign entities file Form W-8BEN-E, foreign individuals file W-8BEN.

Who is importer of record — the part Amazon will not do for you

Amazon never acts as importer of record, and a shipment naming Amazon as importer of record will be refused at the FBA warehouse. Someone has to be on the paperwork: your US entity, your Vietnamese entity registered as a non-resident importer, or an outsourced importer of record service. If you take the second route you also need a CBP-assigned importer number and a US resident agent appointed to accept service of process for the customs bond. With it come the correct HTS code for each SKU, a customs bond, a customs broker, and origin marking — US customs law requires imported goods to show their country of origin clearly to the ultimate purchaser.

Do not build a price model on an import duty figure you read somewhere. US import duty and fees come in layers: the HTS rate for the classification, any additional origin-based tariffs in force, the Merchandise Processing Fee and, on ocean freight, the Harbor Maintenance Fee, plus antidumping and countervailing duties if your product falls within an order — that last layer is set per product and per exporter and can exceed the HTS rate itself. Your broker has to confirm every layer for the right HTS code and the right exporter. Since 2025 US tariff policy on goods of Vietnamese origin has changed several times; the correct number is the one your broker confirms when you book the vessel, not the one from the last shipment. Nor should you design around small parcels to avoid duty: the low-value shipment exemption under Section 321 was suspended by executive action in 2025 and is no longer a basis for a cost model. Because it was suspended by executive action rather than repealed by statute, the position can move in either direction, so check it when you plan. We break the cost lines down in our post on the cost of selling on Amazon FBA.

The real gate is the trademark, not the tax

In Europe the barrier is administrative: the cost sits in paperwork and time, not in whether you are allowed in. In the US the paperwork is lighter but the barrier moves to intellectual property. Amazon.com is the most competitive of the Amazon marketplaces, and a listing that sells well without an IP fence around it gets copied fast. Amazon's main defensive tool is Brand Registry, and its requirement is widely misunderstood: Brand Registry requires a registered trademark, not a filed application — for the US market, a mark registered at the USPTO. The only exception is a pending application filed through Amazon's IP Accelerator programme.

Three things to know about the USPTO. First, an applicant domiciled outside the United States must be represented by a US-licensed attorney; that rule took effect in 2019. Second, the time from filing to registration runs to many months, commonly more than a year, and longer if an examiner issues a refusal; the USPTO publishes current pendency figures, so plan against those rather than against hearsay. Third, if you file on an intent-to-use basis you must also submit evidence of actual use before the mark registers.

The consequence: the trademark step goes first, not last. The most expensive mistake we see at Vietnamese factories is locking a name, printing tens of thousands of packages, and only then searching and discovering the name is already registered for the same class of goods. Reprinting packaging costs far more than the search fee, and it loses you a selling season.

What you lose without Brand Registry

The expensive loss is defence. On Amazon, several sellers can list against the same ASIN. When your listing starts to sell, someone will attach themselves to that ASIN at a lower price, or attach counterfeit goods. The Buy Box follows price and performance, not who created the listing. Without a registered trademark your complaint channel is much thinner: you can still file infringement reports, and you can still rely on copyright or design rights where the product carries them, but you usually have to buy a test unit for evidence first and the process is slow. That is why we treat US trademark attorney fees the way we treat freight: mandatory.

The visible loss is tooling. Brand Registry is necessary for everything on the list below, but it is not sufficient: Vine, Transparency and Project Zero each require separate enrolment against their own eligibility criteria, and Amazon's programme lineup changes. No Brand Registry means no:

• A+ Content, the image-based description below the listing
• Brand Store, your own branded storefront on Amazon
• Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Brands Video
• Brand Analytics and brand-level search term data
• Amazon Vine, the early review channel for new products
• Transparency, Project Zero and the Report a Violation tool

Category rules: FDA, FTC, CPSC

FDA gets involved when the product is food, cosmetics, a dietary supplement or a medical device. For food, the foreign manufacturing facility must register with FDA, designate a US Agent and renew that registration periodically; Prior Notice must be filed for every shipment before it reaches port; and there must be a US-based FSVP importer responsible for verifying the supplier — some product groups are exempt or carry modified requirements, so check against your actual product. Watch the wording: FDA does not approve food, dietary supplements or ordinary cosmetics before sale. Food additives and colour additives are the exception — they have their own approval process. FDA also issues certain certificates for export purposes, but those are not product approvals. Anyone offering you an "FDA approved certificate" for a bag of tea or a capsule is selling you something that does not exist.

Cosmetics now fall under MoCRA, the 2022 statute: facility registration and product listing, with an exemption for small businesses below the revenue threshold set in the statute; safety substantiation records; serious adverse event reporting; and a label carrying US contact details through which consumers can send adverse event reports to the responsible person. The label does not have to print the responsible person's name as a separate field, but it does have to carry that contact route. Dietary supplements fall under DSHEA: a Supplement Facts panel, NDI notification for new ingredients, and limits on claims — structure/function claims must carry the mandatory disclaimer, health claims may only be used in the forms FDA permits, and disease claims are prohibited outright.

Textiles fall under FTC labelling rules: fibre content by percentage, country of origin, the manufacturer's name or an RN number, plus separate rules on care instructions. Garment factories tend to underrate this layer because it requires no licence, but a wrong label is still a wrong label and Amazon takes listings down on complaint. Children's products are heavier: CPSIA requires testing at a CPSC-accepted laboratory, a Children's Product Certificate, and a permanent tracking label on the product, settled at the same time as the packaging artwork. California has Proposition 65, and its mechanism is routinely misread: the duty to warn arises when the product exposes a person to a listed chemical above the safe-harbour level the state publishes, not merely because the chemical appears on the list. It applies to businesses with ten or more employees, and to goods sold into California regardless of where the seller sits. Enforcement comes overwhelmingly from private plaintiffs, so this is litigation risk rather than the risk of a regulator inspection. As for packaging EPR, the US has none at federal level. As at August 2026 around seven states have passed packaging EPR laws with different effective dates — the count rises with each legislative session, so check the current list — Oregon being the first to collect producer fees. In the states where the law is live, the obligated producer for an imported private-label product is typically the brand owner, which means you, not your contract factory.

NANANA Golf, Hoasipho and the order of operations for North America

NANANA Golf is our golf apparel brand on Amazon US: polos, shorts, caps, shoes, priced under $25 to compete on design rather than logo. Legally NANANA touches neither FDA nor EPR; the whole file sits in FTC textile labelling and in the trademark. One thing that is easy to get wrong: Amazon's referral fee for apparel is tiered by selling price, but the tier boundaries sit below $25, so a $25 price point does not get the reduced rate. If you want the lower tier you have to check the current boundary on Amazon's fee schedule before you fix the price; for NANANA, sub-$25 is a positioning decision, not a fee decision. NANANA's hard part is IP: artwork gets photographed and printed elsewhere within weeks. Our rule is to file the US trademark before opening the listing, run small while waiting, and only put advertising budget behind it once Brand Registry is in place.

Hoasipho is our cultural brand: Vietnamese folk art, Dong Ho woodcuts and traditional painting, reframed as wall art for international buyers, currently in brand development and not yet selling on Amazon. The regulatory file is close to empty, but the IP layer is more complex than NANANA's because two rights sit on top of each other: trademark for the brand name and copyright for each individual work. For a heritage-based range you have to be clear about who holds the rights to the artwork you are selling. Here copyright is the primary protection, and it exists independently of Brand Registry. Set against Matelier on Amazon Europe, the difference is plain: Europe makes you pay in paperwork, the US makes you pay in trademark waiting time.

North America on Amazon runs on a unified account covering the US, Canada and Mexico, and you can serve the other two from US inventory through Remote Fulfillment, provided your category and product are eligible for the programme — Amazon has changed those terms more than once. That does not make the three legally identical. Canada has GST/HST at federal level; since mid-2021 marketplaces must collect and remit tax on sales by unregistered vendors, while a foreign seller holding inventory in Canada has its own registration obligations. Separately, Quebec (QST) and British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba (PST) run their own provincial regimes with their own registrations, outside GST/HST — a plan built around one Canadian tax regime breaks at exactly this point. Consumer product labelling in Canada must be bilingual English–French under federal law, and Quebec adds further French-language requirements. For Mexico, how you sell determines the tax position: if you sell as a domestic seller on Amazon.com.mx with inventory in Mexico you need an RFC tax number, and sellers who do not provide one have tax withheld by Amazon at a higher rate; if you only serve Mexican orders from US inventory through Remote Fulfillment the treatment is different, because the transaction is structured as an import. Confirm it with a Mexican tax adviser for the model you actually choose. Labelling in Mexico must follow the NOM standards.

The order we use, in this order: search and file the USPTO trademark through a US attorney; settle the HTS code, the importer of record and the customs bond; complete Amazon's tax interview and W-8BEN-E; build labelling to the category rules; open the listing at small scale to verify real costs; when the mark registers, enter Brand Registry and build A+ Content and the Store; only then scale advertising and inventory. The first step takes the most months, so it has to start first. The account-opening and day-to-day operating steps from Vietnam are covered separately in selling on Amazon from Vietnam.