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The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that pipes and appurtenant equipment used by a taxpayer to produce, store and distribute steam for heating and power generation were exempt from local personal property tax as manufacturing property. Affirming the Appellate Tax Board, the court applied the “great integral machine” doctrine to find that the pipes…

The New Jersey Appellate Division held that New Jersey’s insurance premium tax (IPT) for self-procured insurance coverage is based only on the risks insured in the state, and not based on risk insured throughout the United States. In reversing the New Jersey Tax Court, the appellate court noted the differences between self-procured insurance and surplus…

The Minnesota Supreme Court held that a taxpayer that sold data technology services was not eligible for Minnesota’s sales tax exemption for computer equipment used in online data retrieval systems because the underlying information was “not equally accessible to all of its customers.”

Minnesota provides a sales tax exemption for, among other things, “machinery and…

The Maryland Tax Court reversed the Comptroller’s disallowance of NOLs and essentially struck down a regulation that limited the usage of pre-nexus NOLs. The Comptroller disallowed the taxpayer’s use of NOLs accumulates by entities with no nexus in Maryland that subsequently merged into the taxpayer. The Comptroller relied on a regulation enacted in 2007 that…

Massachusetts Court of Appeals held that a taxpayer could not rely on timely applications for refund of deficiency assessments to also seek refund resulting from alleged overstatement of sales factor in corresponding years’ returns, where the initial application for abatement did not include the sales factor argument and statute of limitations had since lapsed.

The…

The California Office of Tax Appeals (OTA) reversed the Franchise Tax Board’s (FTB) determination that an out-of-state limited liability company (LLC) had taxable nexus with California solely because it held an ownership interest in an LLC operating in the state that ranged from 1.12% to 4.75%. California imposes an annual $800 tax on LLCs “doing…

The Texas Comptroller adopted a proposed decision issued by an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) finding that a company owed sales tax on its sales of online gaming services to Texas residents. The company, who had at least one employee in Texas, developed and maintained online interactive social gaming experiences for its registered users, including those…

The court held that the taxpayer, a freight broker, could deduct freight and delivery charges, which it received from its customers and remitted to third-party delivery providers, from gross receipts before calculating a city’s business privilege tax. A local regulation provides an exemption for freight delivery or transportation charges “paid by the seller for the…

Consistent with a prior decision of a sister appellate court, Texas’ Texarkana Court of Appeals held that the sale of telecommunication products and signals constitutes the sale of a service for purposes of Texas’ franchise tax. The taxpayer sold electrical, light and radio signals to customers through copper wire, fiber-optic cable and leased telephone lines.…

The Montana Supreme Court held that the Department erred in determining that Exxon Mobil was entitled to only an 80% exclusion for dividends received from domestic corporations excluded from the water’s-edge combined return, and concluded that 100% of the actual dividends it received from such entities are excluded from income. Pursuant to Montana statute, Exxon…