By Evan Hamme and Tim Gustafson

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued an advisory opinion exempting from New York state sales tax a charge the petitioner paid to a cable company to cover the cable company’s costs to expand its cable network to bring broadband Internet to the petitioner’s rural location. The Department disagreed with the petitioner’s contention that the charge was exempt from sales tax as a charge for a capital improvement on real property. However, the Department found the charge to provide broadband Internet service to the petitioner was nonetheless exempt from sales tax as a charge for the “provision of internet access service.”  N.Y. Advis. Op., TSB-A-16(32)S (Dec. 2, 2016).