I am an EU (Belgium) based indie developer preparing for the release of my first (game) app next week. I will be offering the game through the Google Play Store. For a lot of countries/regions, Google takes care of collecting and paying the taxes for me (EU, South-Korea, Marocco ...), but not so for US sales. For the US, I need to figure this out myself (or talk to an accountant, but my current accountant seems to have no experience with this).
With the information I have found so far, it seems like it boils down to whether or not I have "nexus" in the US or not. I would say that, by myself, I do not (not a US citizen, not living in US, business not situated in US).
"Please note that in the U.S., you are only required to collect sales tax in states where you have “sales tax nexus”. This occurs when your business has some kind of “physical presence” in a state, for instance; an office, employees, inventory, affiliates, a drop shipping relationship or selling products at a tradeshow or other event. If you have nexus in a state, then you have to apply sales tax to buyers in that state." (https://quaderno.io/blog/sales-tax-digital-products-us/)
However, I am selling through the Google Play Store. Does that change anything? Google says I remain the seller of record when selling apps. (https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2850368?hl=en)
Obviously, I'm hoping I don't need to collect sales tax, as managing/paying that administrative overhead doesn't seem feasible in regards to the small amount of sales I'm expecting. Meaning it might lead me to avoid the US market
This might also matter: the game app itself will actually be offered for free but will have InAppPurchases (to disable the infrequent ads/to support development).