Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
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 Stephen Burroughs and Andrew Appleby
The Florida Department of Revenue determined that the sale of remote storage and cloud computing services, along with related data transfer fees, are information services not subject to Florida sales tax or Communication Service Tax (CST). The taxpayer’s remote storage service grants customers access to servers for data storage.
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 Douglas Mo and Zachary Atkins
The California Court of Appeal held that the San Mateo County Assessor illegally assessed the intangible assets of the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay Hotel. This is the first appellate decision to follow Elk Hills Power, LLC v. Board of Equalization, 57 Cal.4th 593, 304 P.3d 1052 (2013) (reported…
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…
Sutherland’s state and local tax team will host the Sutherland SALT Roundtable Silicon Valley on Tuesday, June 17 at the Sofitel San Francisco Bay in Redwood City, California. The roundtable will take an in-depth look at significant state and local tax issues and developments impacting the technology sector, including:
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Yesterday the Louisiana 24th Judicial District Court held that a cable service provider’s video-on-demand and pay-per-view video programming are not tangible personal property subject to sales tax. Jefferson Parish had alleged that the programming could be seen and heard and thus fell within the definition of tangible personal property. Following a trial, the court found…
On June 2, the Arm’s Length Advisory Group (the Group) of the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) met in St. Louis, Missouri, to begin the process of developing a multistate arm’s length pricing adjustment service. States participating in the meeting included Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, New Jersey, North Carolina and the District of Columbia. Joe Garrett (Alabama) was elected to chair the Group. The Group is primarily concerned with addressing the inability to effectively conduct transfer pricing audits at the state level. It seeks to create a viable project design sufficiently developed for an operational model by July 2015.
Continue Reading MTC Launches Transfer Pricing Effort
