It’s the last place you’d expect to read such a recommendation, but in a commentary for the Wall Street Journal, Stu Woo suggests “Amazon.com may want to embrace the tax man.”

As Woo notes, “The company has retaliated against the 10 or so states that passed ‘Amazon laws’ that try to force online retailers to collect sales taxes,” has sued some of those states, and is spending a fortune organizing a petition to force a recall of California’s “Amazon tax.”

As he explains,

The common thinking is that Amazon’s tax-free sales give it as much as a 10% pricing advantage in high sales-tax states such as California and Illinois. Credit Suisse estimates the company would lose 2.7% of its North American sales, which were $18 billion in 2010, if Congress passed far-reaching federal online sales-tax-collection legislation.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong, Woo argues.

If it starts collecting sales taxes, Amazon could build warehouses in or just outside major cities. The result: potentially lower shipping time and costs. That is important for a company that had operating margins of just 3.3% in the year’s first quarter. It may also allow the company to pursue other opportunities, like a textbook-rental-by-mail service.

And, although Woo doesn’t point it out, there’s also the advantage of looking like a law-abiding company that isn’t essentially violating tax laws in addition to anti-trust laws: Priceless.