Noteworthy Cases

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Sutherland SALT releases the third edition of its SALT Scoreboard, a quarterly publication that tracks significant state tax litigation and controversy developments and tallies the results of taxpayer wins and losses across the country. Our quarterly publication features Sutherland’s observations regarding important state tax decisions and identifies trends by issue, state and forum as they…

By Chelsea Marmor and Andrew Appleby

The Kentucky Court of Appeals held that a Kentucky statute, which retroactively reduced vendors’ 1% deduction of the sales tax collected and remitted to Kentucky to $1,500 in any monthly reporting period, did not violate the Kentucky Constitution. Wal-Mart argued that the statute violated the Kentucky Constitution because the…

By Alla Raykin andf Eric Coffill

The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the Minnesota Tax Court’s award of attorney’s fees to a taxpayer that had challenged the Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue’s assessment of sales and use tax. The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the Tax Court decision, because it reasonably concluded that the Commissioner’s additional use tax…

By Ted Friedman and Charlie Kearns

The New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal held that the Petitioner, a Delaware LLC, owed New York City real property transfer tax (RPTT) on the transfer of an interest in certain real property. The Tribunal applied the step transaction doctrine and treated the contribution of the Petitioner’s tenant-in-common interest…

By Jessica Eisenmenger and Tim Gustafson

The Supreme Court of Mississippi held that a county had the right to a jury trial in an appeal of the county’s ad valorem tax assessment. In reaching its decision, the court relied on centuries-old customs, practices and decisions upholding the right to a jury trial in tax assessment…

By Robert Merten and Madison Barnett

The Oregon Tax Court held that Oregon was not constitutionally prohibited from determining the applicable graduated income tax rate of a part-year resident individual based on the individual’s full-year taxable income, even though a majority of that income was earned outside of the state. The taxpayer argued that applying…

By Nick Kump and Scott Wright

The Louisiana Court of Appeal held that income derived from diagnostic testing of Louisiana patients’ blood samples and other medical specimens performed in Texas should be sourced to Texas for corporate income tax apportionment purposes. The taxpayer, which operates a multistate network of laboratories where it performs medically prescribed…

By Chris Mehrmann and Open Weaver Banks

The Michigan Supreme Court denied an application for leave to appeal a Michigan Court of Appeals decision that sanctioned the Michigan’s Legislature’s retroactive withdrawal from the Multistate Tax Compact. The court summarily denied the appeal—which was filed by Harley Davidson Motor Company, Inc. and 13 other taxpayers—explaining that…

By Chris Mehrmann and Andrew Appleby

The Oregon Supreme Court held that property owned by DirecTV, Inc., a satellite television provider, was subject to central assessment because DirecTV was engaged in the business of providing “data transmission services,” making it a “communications” business. In reaching its decision, the court explained that data transmission services include…