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After losing at trial, the Maine State Tax Assessor is now arguing to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court that sales tax applies to carrier subsidies received by Apple on its sales of iPhones bundled with service contracts.  During the years in issue, Apple sold iPhones to its customers at a reduced price when the customers…

Citing to principles of comity, a federal district court remanded back to state court a class action suit brought by Indiana municipalities seeking franchise fees from various streaming video companies.

The Indiana municipalities filed a class action lawsuit against the streaming video companies in state court, asserting that the companies were obligated to pay franchise…

The Washington Department of Revenue has published a draft “pre-proposal” for regulations on the state’s 2019 marketplace facilitator law. The draft guidance includes: definitions of key legislative terms; a summary of who is and isn’t a marketplace facilitator, a requirement for marketplace facilitators to collect other retail taxes such as car rental taxes,…

On November 20, the Executive Committee of the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) met via videoconference for its final meeting of 2020. During the meeting, the Committee heard updates from Greg Matson (MTC Executive Director) and each of the MTC’s standing committees, including the State Intercompany Transactions Advisory Service (SITAS) Committee. Here are the highlights.

Krystal…

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued an advisory opinion explaining that a corporation’s charges for access to its digital advertising platform are subject to sales tax.  The corporation provides digital advertising products to customers through an online management platform that allows customers to access a package of software tools to…

On November 16th and 17th, 2020, the Multistate Tax Commission’s (“MTC”) Nexus and Audit Committees met to consider several topics.  The biggest developments from these meetings are that: (1) the Nexus Committee shared their proposed, revised draft of its Uniform Sales and Use Tax Exemption/Resale Certificate – Multijurisdiction, which reflects the Wayfair …

The Texas Comptroller adopted an Administrative Law Judge’s decision affirming a sales and use tax assessment on a Texas-based marketing and advertising agency for “invoices for the time to create digital artwork.” According to the Comptroller, the artwork that the advertising agency “delivered to the third‑party printers was either finished art or preliminary art that…

In a rapidly escalating matter of concern to all District business taxpayers, the D.C. Council again will consider B23-35, the D.C. False Claims Amendment Act of 2020, which would expand the D.C. False Claims Act to tax matters above specified thresholds. The Council will review the committee mark-up tomorrow, November 17th. First reading would…

In Determination 18-0255, the Washington Department of Revenue determined that a marketplace seller established substantial nexus in Washington for business and occupation tax purposes by participating in the marketplace facilitator’s “digital reassignment” process.  This process allows the facilitator to ship to the marketplace seller’s customers a competitor’s equivalent product if the marketplace seller’s product…