Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Stephanie Do and Todd Lard
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky preliminarily enjoined Kentucky from denying tax incentives to a religious-based theme park. The court held that excluding the company from the state’s tax incentives program on the basis of the company’s religious beliefs, message and conduct violated the Establishment and…
By Charles Capouet and Charlie Kearns
The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the interpretation of inheritance tax statutes by the Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals was not entitled to Chevron deference. Deference is given only to an administrative agency’s interpretation of the statutes which it administers. The Board is merely a reviewing tribunal; it is…
The Multistate Tax Commission advanced several items of interest during its annual fall meetings held in Charleston, South Carolina, this week, including the creation of a new committee to continue gathering support for its transfer pricing program.
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The Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals (Board) has held that Netflix’s digital streaming service is not subject to the state’s telecommunications taxes.
Kentucky’s telecommunications tax regime is comprised of three distinct taxes, each imposed on the provision of “multichannel video programming service” (MVPS). The taxes consist of a gross revenues tax, an…
In a case pitting statutory language against a department of revenue’s historical practice, the Kentucky Court of Appeals held that the “franchise” of a public service corporation is a separate asset for ad valorem taxation purposes, and it is subject to state and local property taxation. Dayton Power & Light Co. v. Dep’t of Revenue…
Retailers and banks continue to get whipsawed on sales tax bad debt deductions where a retailer provides a private label credit card program in conjunction with a third party bank. The Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals ruled that a retailer was not entitled to a bad debt deduction because it was not the party that…
In 2007, Kentucky enacted a nonrefundable income tax credit of up to $1 per gallon of ethanol produced in the state. Under the statute, ethanol producers were required to file a credit claim “on forms prescribed by the department by January 15 following the close of the preceding calendar year.” The Department of Revenue (Department) appears to have…
On October 21, the Supreme Court of Kentucky overturned the denial of a taxpayer’s document request under Kentucky’s Open Records Law. Dep’t of Revenue v. Wyrick, Case No. 2008-SC-000468-DG (Ky. 2010). Wyrick, an attorney representing a newspaper company on a tax refund claim before the Board of Tax Appeals, sought numerous documents from the Department of Revenue through a pretrial discovery request. When the Board denied Wyrick’s pretrial discovery request, Wyrick requested many of the same documents from the Department under Kentucky’s Open Records Law. The Department denied most of the request, citing the civil litigation limit in Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 61.878(1) (2010), which provides that “no court shall authorize the inspection by any party of any materials pertaining to civil litigation beyond that which is provided by the Rules of Civil Procedure governing pretrial discovery.”Continue Reading Kentucky Supreme Court Tells Department of Revenue: ‘Open Sesame’
A taxpayer has filed a petition for certiorari, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on whether an out-of-state corporation has nexus with Kentucky by virtue of its ownership interest in a limited partnership that does business in the state. Asworth LLC (f/k/a Asworth Corp) v. Kentucky Dep’t of Revenue, Docket No. 10-662 (Nov.
