Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Stephen Burroughs, Jonathan Feldman and Open Weaver Banks
In a significant taxpayer win, the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board (ATB) held that intercompany interest payments from a wholly owned subsidiary to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) were bona fide loans and were deductible for excise tax purposes. The subsidiary (HoldCo) was a holding…
By Zachary Atkins & Prentiss Willson
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) refused to allow a taxpayer, a financial institution, to assign its loan portfolios based on the location of third-party loan servicing activities for purposes of calculating its financial institution excise tax property factor. The taxpayer earned flow-through interest income through its residual beneficial…
By Robert P. Merten III and Prentiss Willson
Massachusetts has published its final revised market-sourcing regulation (830 CMR 63.38.1), effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2014. The final revisions to these rules, among other things, conform the regulation with recent state law amendments requiring taxpayers to use market-based sourcing…
By Stephanie Do and Andrew Appleby
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue addressed the possible expiration and subsequent retroactive enactment of the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA). The Department advised Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to continue to rely on Technical Information Release (TIR) No. 05-8 (July 14, 2005), until further notice, to determine the taxability…
By Jessica Kerner and Charlie Kearns
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue determined that the sale of access to an online database was not subject to sales and use tax because the “object of the transaction” was nontaxable data processing services rather than taxable prewritten software. The taxpayer sells subscriptions to a website that allows purchasers…
By Scott Booth and Andrew Appleby
The Massachusetts Governor released his proposed fiscal year 2015 budget, which includes a tax provision that is targeted directly at the insurance industry. Currently, income earned by pass-through entities, such as partnerships, owned by licensed life or property and casualty insurers is excluded from Massachusetts income tax because…
By Sahang-Hee Hahn and Timothy Gustafson
Less than two months after Massachusetts enacted a tax on computer design and software services (Tech Tax), the legislation was repealed with the passage of House Bill (HB) 3662 (for Sutherland’s previous coverage of this development, click here). The Tech Tax expanded Massachusetts’s sales and use tax…
By Christopher Chang and Timothy Gustafson
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue issued a Letter Ruling stating that, for purposes of determining common control with regard to a combined report, the Department looks to actual voting control as opposed to voting power, which is the test for federal consolidated reporting. Under the Massachusetts combined reporting rules…
By Kathryn Pittman and Timothy Gustafson
The Massachusetts Commissioner of Revenue concluded in a letter ruling that a taxpayer’s sales of subscriptions to use its virtual event platform and planning software were subject to sales tax where the use of the software was the object of the transactions. For a flat fee based on length…
By Scott Booth and Timothy Gustafson
The Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board ruled that an out-of-state corporation’s subsidiary qualified as a financial institution by virtue of the lending activities undertaken by the trusts in which it held beneficial ownership and from which the subsidiary derived more than 50% of its gross income. Under Massachusetts’ statutory “catchall”…
