A Wall Street Journal article (August 3, 2011) estimates that being required to collect sales tax would reduce Amazon.com’s sales by 1.4 % or about $ 650 million per year.   While operating without a brick-and-mortar store in all states, Amazon.com does own warehouses and do product development – state lawmakers, who estimate they loose about $ 11 billion in tax revenues collectively, are trying to change the definition fo what consitutes operating in a state.  Should ecommerce merchants that do product development in a state be subject to state taxes ? Amazon.com is claimed to avoid emails sent from locations in states considering such laws – does the impact on efficiency for Amazon worth avoiding the these taxes and its impact on demand ?