Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Evan Hamme and Tim Gustafson
In a rare Chief Counsel Ruling (the first of 2015), the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) held that the sale of an entire line of business qualified as an “occasional sale” for corporate franchise tax purposes, thus requiring the selling taxpayer to exclude the resulting gross receipts from its…
By Mike Kerman and Madison Barnett
The Indiana Tax Court granted summary judgment to Rent-A-Center East, Inc. (RAC), finding that the Department of Revenue’s determination that RAC and two affiliates should have filed a combined return was improper. This case was on remand from a prior Indiana Supreme Court ruling (please see our prior coverage…
In his State of the State address at the beginning of the year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tasked the Legislature with enacting meaningful business tax relief. The Legislature responded by reducing the franchise (also called the margin) tax rate and creating new exemptions and incentives for sales tax. At the same time, however, the Legislature…
By Michael Penza and Timothy Gustafson
The Virginia Tax Commissioner upheld an upward adjustment to a taxpayer’s payroll factor attributing to Virginia all compensation that the taxpayer had reported to the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) for purposes of the state’s unemployment insurance tax. The taxpayer, a Virginia-based contractor providing security services for the United States…
By Mike Kerman and Open Weaver Banks
The Washington Court of Appeals held that for local business and occupation (B&O) tax purposes, a securities broker with employees in its Seattle office must source to Seattle the receipts from commissions for services performed by the employees via phone and Internet. Under the city ordinance implementing the…
By Michael Penza and Amy Nogid
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit invalidated Florida’s rental tax imposed on the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s (the Tribe) leases of tribal land to non-Indian corporations, but upheld Florida’s utility tax collected from the Tribe.
The Tribe operated casinos on two of its reservations; non-Indian corporations…
The long saga of Michigan’s Multistate Tax Compact election continued on Wednesday with oral argument before the Michigan Court of Appeals. A packed courtroom witnessed a 1.5 hour proceeding before an active three-judge panel. The arguments focused primarily on: (1) whether legislation can retroactively repeal the state’s adoption of the Multistate Tax Compact; (2) whether…
