Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
On April 12, 2022, the Appellate Division, First Department dismissed a taxpayer’s appeal from the New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal, and held that the Tribunal’s decision to uphold a tax assessment on an out-of-state entity’s gain from the sale of a partnership interest was “rational.”[1]
The taxpayer was an investment vehicle that formed…
Following a taxpayer’s appeal of a local Virginia county (County) Business, Professional and Occupational License (BPOL) tax assessment, the Virginia Tax Commissioner held that the taxpayer’s remote employees’ payroll was properly excluded from the numerator of the payroll apportionment calculation. The taxpayer was headquartered out of state and maintained offices worldwide, including an office in…
The Indiana Department of Revenue found that a holding company was properly excluded as a member of its affiliates’ financial institutions tax (FIT) combined group return because the company failed to establish nexus with the state. The Department also decided that for purposes of the FIT, there is no distinction between business and nonbusiness income.…
The California Office of Tax Appeals (OTA) recently sustained the Franchise Tax Board’s (FTB) income tax treatment of an IRC 338(h)(10) election. In return for all the outstanding stock in the target S-Corporation taxpayer, third-party buyers paid an initial (fixed) purchase price and agreed to make deferred contingent earnout payments totaling up to $50 million…
The Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board found that software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider Akamai Technologies Inc. was a manufacturing corporation, rather than a service provider. Akamai, headquartered in Massachusetts, provided software-based cloud services allowing customers to manage the delivery of web and media content over the Internet. In Massachusetts, a manufacturing corporation must use single sales factor apportionment,…
On August 24, 2021 (released November 2021), the Virginia Department of Taxation (the Department) concluded that a provider of professional and information technology services was entitled to payroll apportionment of gross receipts for a local Business, Professional and Occupational License Tax (BPOL Tax) refund claim. Virginia localities may impose a BPOL Tax on the gross…
The Washington Court of Appeals recently issued a divided (2-1) decision in a case involving Washington’s “benefits received” test for apportioning service income. The Court ruled that the “benefit” of an airplane design firm’s services were received in Washington, where the taxpayer’s direct customer, Boeing, manufactured the airplanes incorporating the taxpayer’s airplane designs, rather than…
The Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission sided with the Department of Revenue, ruling that American Honda Motor Co.’s sale of environmental credits generated apportionable income for corporate income and franchise tax purposes. American Honda bought vehicles from related companies and resold them to car dealerships and other retailers in the U.S.
When American Honda sold its…
The Michigan Court of Appeals reaffirmed its March 2020 decision that application of the state’s statutory apportionment formula was unconstitutionally distortive as applied to a taxpayer’s Michigan Business Tax (MBT) liability. The Michigan Supreme Court vacated and remanded the Court of Appeals’ March 2020 decision, which was the topic of a prior SALT Shaker post…
On May 14, 2021, the Indiana Tax Court upheld a pharmacy benefit management company’s sourcing of its receipts under Indiana’s costs of performance rules applicable to receipts from services. The court rejected the Indiana Department of Revenue’s position that the receipts should instead be sourced according to the rules for sales of tangible personal property.…
