A recent US Supreme Court decision on surcharges strengthened taxpayers’ First Amendment rights when deciding how they present pass-through fees and taxes to their customers.
- The Supreme Court held that a New York statute prohibiting a seller from imposing a credit surcharge was a speech regulation, subject to heightened scrutiny, because it regulates how retailers communicate their prices.
- The decision’s reasoning regarding the communication of prices as speech clarifies that the heightened scrutiny standard also applies to state and local tax statutes regulating a taxpayer’s ability to separately identify taxes and fees on customer invoices.
Prior to this decision, courts and states have taken differing positions on whether a seller may be prohibited from separately identifying tax on a customer invoice when the seller is not required to pass through the tax.