For decades, the sales factor has been a primary focus of state and local tax articles and a hot topic of discussion at conferences across the country, and the attention is well deserved. There has been no shortage of impactful legislative changes, interesting administrative rulings, and significant (and at times frustrating) judicial decisions regarding the
California considers single sales factor for banks and financials
The California Franchise Tax Board’s method of taxing banks and financial institutions is consistently complex, and a bit messy. This complexity would worsen under the January budget proposal of California Governor Gavin Newsom to tax banks (and savings and loans) using single-sales-factor apportionment.
In this installment of A Pinch of SALT, published by Tax Notes
Good riddance? FTB’s informal guidance is literally disappearing
Midway through 2024, and without any notice, the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) pulled all Technical Advice Memorandums from its website. Overnight, decades of responses by the FTB’s Legal Division to FTB staff requests regarding the interpretation of existing tax law or the application of existing tax law to a specific set of facts literally
2024’s Most Interesting State Tax (MIST) developments
We’re excited to present our summary of last year’s SALT highlights, recently featured in Tax Notes State.
We hope you enjoy our take on 2024’s Most Interesting State Tax (MIST) developments.
Read the full article here.
Ambiguous allocation and apportionment statutes should favor taxpayers
Courts have formulated more than a dozen legal canons of statutory construction specific to tax.
In the October 2024 installment of “A Pinch of SALT” in Tax Notes State, Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Jeff Friedman, John Ormonde and Kelly Donigan examine the application of statutory construction principles to conflicts involving allocation and apportionment statutes.
Because
Another item to check off: New state income tax disclosure requirements
In December 2023, the Financial Accounting Standards Board added significant income tax disclosure requirements to the already cumbersome and complex checklist of state tax financial statement disclosure rules.
In this installment of A Pinch of SALT published in Tax Notes State, Eversheds Sutherland attorneys Todd Betor and Jeff Friedman discuss the Financial Accounting Standards
Managing the growing MTC Audit Program
In a 2020 article, the Eversheds Sutherland SALT team guided taxpayers on how to handle a Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) audit, providing an overview of the MTC’s Joint Audit Program and highlighting the differences between an MTC audit and a single-state audit. At the time, the article observed that “the MTC has been gaining
Is state conformity to federal R&E deductions unconstitutional?
Sometimes states intentionally favor domestic commerce, and sometimes they unintentionally discriminate against foreign commerce. In Kraft General Foods Inc. v. Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance, the US Supreme Court made clear that both are illegal. Because most states’ corporate income taxes conform to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) to some degree, recent federal
The advantages of litigating tax disputes
Most often, state and local tax litigation follows the escalation of an administrative controversy — resulting from the denial of a protest or refund claim, or other tax agency determination. While there are times when litigation is the only remaining option, the decision whether or not to proceed with litigating a tax case is often
Forecasting the future of FTB’s informal guidance
In this episode of the SALT Shaker Podcast, Eversheds Sutherland Counsel Jeremy Gove welcomes back Sacramento SALT Partner Tim Gustafson for another California-focused conversation!
Tim and Jeremy base their discussion around a recent article Tim co-authored in Tax Notes State with Associate Sharon Kaur about the California FTB’s informal guidance.
Specifically, they delve into the