I did some reading and think I found the difference. When I first paired and connected my phone was on a WiFi connection that had already linked with Google servers, thus allowing the Google syncs. I tried the same thing minus being connected to WiFi for a minutes first and everything but Google syncs (market updates, gmail via the app, etc) would work. I suppose using Bluetooth doesn't see the sync that the tablet needs to see through WiFi?
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A Rezound phone was used for this Tapatalk post
For what it's worth, I had a really hard time getting a working Internet connection over wifi after bluetooth tethering, even after clearing the proxy.