Tax Compliance in the Amazon

From 2012 to 2014, Amazon sent three emails to Tennessee purchasers with information about their potential use tax obligations and how to pay them. The messages did not threaten enforcement, but they included information that likely raised awareness and lowered the cost of compliance. Following each email, the volume of consumer use tax filings briefly increased by a factor of 3–5, but the value of new payments was too small to register a significant difference in total collections. Business tax payments were not exceptional in the months following each email.