California

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California adopted UDITPA in 1966, with its equally weighted three-factor formula for apportioning multistate income – property, payroll, and sales. Over time, however, the sales factor has emerged as the primary mechanism for determining tax liability in California.

Today, California’s sales factor is the same as it was nearly 60 years ago. Although the fraction…

Closing out a process that began nearly nine years ago, the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) recently submitted proposed amendments to its market sourcing regulation, California Code of Regulations, title 18, section 25136-2, to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for final approval. The version submitted to OAL includes the same simplifying presumptions for sourcing…

A California appeals court held that taxpayers challenging city fees as unconstitutional without seeking a refund need not exhaust their administrative remedies. The taxpayers alleged that the City of Azusa’s sewer and trash franchise fees violated Proposition 218, Article XIII D of the California Constitution because the fees exceeded the cost of providing those services…

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…

In November 2024, voters approved Proposition M which provided for an overhaul of San Francisco’s gross receipts tax. (See our prior coverage here.) Proposition M changed the allocation and apportionment rules for most industries, generally requiring that three quarters of a taxpayer’s total receipts are allocated to the city on a market basis and…

The California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) has proposed amendments to its regulations that govern how sales of services and intangibles are sourced for income tax purposes. The changes to this income tax apportionment regulation will apply to nearly every corporation that pays California tax. Comments regarding these proposed changes are due no later than February…

In his draft budget plan for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 released on January 10, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed to bring financial institutions in line with most other corporate taxpayers when it comes to apportioning multistate income. Banks and “financial corporations” currently use a three-factor apportionment formula consisting of property, payroll and sales to apportion…

In this article, originally published by CalCPA in the January/February 2025 issue of California CPA, Eversheds Sutherland Senior Counsel Eric Coffill spotlights the recent disappearance of Technical Advice Memorandums (TAMs) from the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) website.

Read the full article here.

On November 5, voters cast their ballots to determine who would fill a variety of federal, state, and local offices. Several states also considered tax related ballot initiatives. We describe some of the more significant ballot initiatives and their results.

Sales Tax

There were a few states with ballot initiatives that would exempt items from…