Noteworthy Cases

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On July 14, 2014, the Michigan Supreme Court in a splintered 3-1-3 decision found in favor of IBM’s election to apply the Multistate Tax Compact’s three-factor apportionment formula to the now-repealed Michigan Business Tax (MBT).
Background
Several states, including Michigan in 1970, entered into the Multistate Tax Compact (Compact), which describes how multistate corporations allocate

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By Stephen Burroughs and Andrew Appleby

The Tennessee Court of Appeals held that the Commissioner had the authority to require Vodafone, a wireless communications provider, to use an alternative apportionment method for Tennessee franchise and excise tax purposes. Vodafone used Tennessee’s statutory cost-of-performance (COP) method to source its telecommunication service receipts. Using Tennessee’s statutory COP…

By Sahang-Hee Hahn and Pilar Mata

The Illinois Department of Revenue determined that a taxpayer’s cloud computing receipts should be sourced for sales factor purposes using a market-based approach because the receipts were derived from services. The taxpayer was an information technology hosting services provider engaged in a business that focused on the delivery and…

By Kathryn Pittman and Andrew Appleby

In a post-audit challenge by a taxpayer, the Virginia Tax Commissioner addressed entity classification, nexus and royalty add-back issues. The Commissioner found that the taxpayer did not provide sufficient evidence that its single member LLC was a disregarded entity or that certain entities were financial institutions. Turning to nexus,…

By Ted Friedman and Andrew Appleby

The South Dakota Supreme Court held that a corporation operating a hunting lodge did not owe use tax on its purchases of food, beverages and ammunition because the lodge purchased the goods for resale to the lodge’s customers in the regular course of business. The lodge offered hunting packages…

By David Pope and Timothy Gustafson 

The Michigan Court of Appeals held that Thomson Reuters’ sale of Checkpoint, an online tax and accounting research program, was the sale of a nontaxable information service and not tangible personal property for purposes of Michigan’s use tax. The Michigan Department of Treasury argued Checkpoint was tangible personal…