Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Kathryn Pittman and Andrew Appleby
The Colorado Department of Revenue determined that sales of digital images, whether delivered electronically or via tangible medium, are sales of tangible personal property for income tax apportionment purposes. The taxpayer was engaged in the business of providing digital images to commercial and government customers and provided such images…
By Jessica Kerner and Timothy Gustafson
The Tennessee Department of Revenue determined in a Letter Ruling that a taxpayer’s sale of remote storage services and virtual computing services are not subject to Tennessee sales or use tax where the data centers and servers used to provide such services are located outside the state. The…
By Suzanne Palms and Timothy Gustafon
The Illinois House of Representatives recently held a contentious hearing on legislation introduced earlier this year that would require publicly traded corporations, and those that are at least 50% owned by a publicly traded company, “doing business” in Illinois to disclose certain tax information in an annual statement filed…
By David Pope and Timothy Gustafson
The Virginia Tax Commissioner determined that an out-of-state manufacturer was subject to use tax on “local marketing group” fees charged to its customers because the true object of the transaction was the sale of tangible personal property. The taxpayer manufactured heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for sale…
By Kathryn Pittman and Andrew Appleby
The Arizona Department of Revenue determined that a taxpayer providing online backup and restoration services was subject to Arizona’s transaction privilege tax (TPT) after concluding that the receipts from such services were taxable as rentals of prewritten software. The taxpayer provided services that automatically backed up and restored files. As…
By Suzanne Palms and Andrew Appleby
The Arizona Department of Revenue determined that shipping and handling fees were subject to Arizona’s transaction privilege tax (TPT). The company sold tangible personal property via the Internet. The company’s affiliates fulfilled the orders, which included activities such as labeling, packaging and shipping the items via common carrier. The…
By David Pope and Prentiss Willson
The New Jersey Division of Taxation concluded in a technical bulletin that sales of cloud computing services are not subject to sales and use tax in New Jersey. Although this is not a change to the Division’s position, the bulletin specifically identifies software as a service (SaaS), platform as…
By Saabir Kapoor and Andrew Appleby
The Colorado Department of Revenue (Department) determined that sales tax does not apply to a subscription fee for an interactive stock screening service. The taxpayer, a financial news and research organization, offered proprietary web-based stock screening tools to customers for a monthly subscription fee. To determine whether the subscription…
By Suzanne Palms and Andrew Appleby
The Michigan Court of Appeals held that a taxpayer was not liable for additional single business tax (SBT) and use tax because the taxpayer was making sales of tangible personal property at its Michigan facility rather than performing a service. The taxpayer’s business activities at issue consisted of…
By Scott Booth and Prentiss Willson
The Vermont Supreme Court held that coupon books distributed monthly, within a free weekly newspaper and also separately distributed on news racks, were not “component parts” of the newspaper, and thus were not exempt from Vermont sales and use tax as newspapers. Vermont exempts newspapers and tangible personal property…
