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.

Oral argument was held June 11 in the highly unusual case of Synthes USA HQ Inc. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  • The Attorney General faced skeptical questioning from the Commonwealth Court, with one judge suggesting that the Attorney General was “defeating,” rather than representing, the interests of the Department of Revenue.
  • Synthes involves the question of

The New York State Tax Appeals Tribunal affirmed a New York State Division of Tax Appeals determination denying a refund claim to a taxpayer that sought to apply the income sourcing rules for registered broker-dealers to receipts from its separate investment advisory business. The taxpayer structured its broker-dealer operations and investment advisory operations into two

The Florida Department of Revenue determined that a platform software company should source its income from user fees and from its sale of services on a market basis, based on the location of the customer to which the services are provided. The platform software company provided a platform for developers to create and sell software

The Virginia Supreme Court held that the use of the cost-of-performance method to apportion nearly 100% of the taxpayer’s sales of services to Virginia did not violate the U.S. Constitution, even though over 95% of the taxpayer’s customers were located outside of the state – perhaps an expected result for a services company based in

It is more complicated to determine an in-state sale regarding the provision of multistate services or licenses of intangibles. Historically, states looked to a taxpayer’s costs of performing the service or licensing the intangible. Some states have become critical of this cost-of-performance method and replaced it with a market-based method of computing in-state sales.

In

By Dmitrii Gabrielov and Tim Gustafson

The South Carolina Court of Appeals held that all of DIRECTV’s South Carolina customer subscription receipts were properly sourced to the state for purposes of determining DIRECTV’s corporate income tax apportionment factor due to the location of its satellite signal delivery. South Carolina’s apportionment statute requires a taxpayer to

By Nick Kump and Scott Wright

The Louisiana Court of Appeal held that income derived from diagnostic testing of Louisiana patients’ blood samples and other medical specimens performed in Texas should be sourced to Texas for corporate income tax apportionment purposes. The taxpayer, which operates a multistate network of laboratories where it performs medically prescribed

By Chris Mehrmann and Carley Roberts

An administrative law judge (ALJ) of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration upheld the denial of a taxpayer’s corporate income tax refund claim, after the taxpayer attempted to amend its returns to apply the cost of performance method of sourcing income. Arkansas has adopted section 18 of the