Merchants don't pay sales taxes, they collect them on behalf of the taxing entity. The tax is owed by the consumer to the entity regardless of whether the merchant collects it or not. Amazon was trying to give itself an advantage over physical retailers, but thus had nothing to do with Amazon trying to get out of taxes.

>Merchants don't pay sales taxes

That’s cute, but not the way the Law works generally. Maybe you can point to a single state where the law is different, until then I’ll just say the general rule is if the merchant makes of $x they are required by law to collect sales tax. Where or not the merchant does, they will be liable to the state for payment of the same, not the individual consumers.

If the law worked the way you represent why would any merchant collect and pay sales tax to the states?

Which is a total gangster move by the states. Force merchants to do the dirty work.