For decades, the sales factor has been a primary focus of state and local tax articles and a hot topic of discussion at conferences across the country, and the attention is well deserved. There has been no shortage of impactful legislative changes, interesting administrative rulings, and significant (and at times frustrating) judicial decisions regarding the
In the News
NY Tax Talk: Sourcing, retroactivity, information services
The last four months were active in New York tax law. In addition to numerous legislative proposals, decisions were issued in multiple court cases.
In this installment of NY Tax Talk, a quarterly column in Law360 focused on recent developments in New York tax law, Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Liz Cha and Chelsea Marmor discuss select…
California considers single sales factor for banks and financials
The California Franchise Tax Board’s method of taxing banks and financial institutions is consistently complex, and a bit messy. This complexity would worsen under the January budget proposal of California Governor Gavin Newsom to tax banks (and savings and loans) using single-sales-factor apportionment.
In this installment of A Pinch of SALT, published by Tax Notes…
Good riddance? FTB’s informal guidance is literally disappearing
Midway through 2024, and without any notice, the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) pulled all Technical Advice Memorandums from its website. Overnight, decades of responses by the FTB’s Legal Division to FTB staff requests regarding the interpretation of existing tax law or the application of existing tax law to a specific set of facts literally…
2024’s Most Interesting State Tax (MIST) developments
We’re excited to present our summary of last year’s SALT highlights, recently featured in Tax Notes State.
We hope you enjoy our take on 2024’s Most Interesting State Tax (MIST) developments.
Read the full article here.
Missing TAMs
In this article, originally published by CalCPA in the January/February 2025 issue of California CPA, Eversheds Sutherland Senior Counsel Eric Coffill spotlights the recent disappearance of Technical Advice Memorandums (TAMs) from the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) website.
Read the full article here.
Inequitable barriers to equitable apportionment
Apportionment formulas sometimes produce unfair results. To rectify the unfairness, taxpayers can (and should) use an alternative apportionment formula to apportion corporate income. In their article for TEI’s Tax Executive journal, Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Jeff Friedman and Sebastian Iagrossi focus on a troubling aspect of alternative apportionment— some states require pre-approval of an alternative apportionment…
Ambiguous allocation and apportionment statutes should favor taxpayers
Courts have formulated more than a dozen legal canons of statutory construction specific to tax.
In the October 2024 installment of “A Pinch of SALT” in Tax Notes State, Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Jeff Friedman, John Ormonde and Kelly Donigan examine the application of statutory construction principles to conflicts involving allocation and apportionment statutes.
Because…
Considering Chevron’s end through a state tax lens
In the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., federal judges became exceedingly deferential to administrative agencies’ interpretations of apparently ambiguously drafted laws. As the impact of Chevron evolved, flaws in its holding became apparent across almost every area of law, including tax.…
NY Tax Talk: Questions in corporate franchise tax regs case
The first challenge to New York’s corporate franchise tax regulations is already in high gear: Paychex Inc. v. Department of Taxation and Finance. Although New York’s corporate tax reform took effect January 1, 2015, it took the department almost a decade to adopt the regulations. For many years, the draft regulations received comments and…