Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Mike Le and Tim Gustafson
On December 8, 2017, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an order without opinion in Thomas v. Elbow River Marketing Ltd. Partnership, affirming a lower court’s decision that a Canada-based seller of hydrocarbon products did not engage in or carry on a business in the City of Birmingham…
By Maria Todorova and Suzanne Palms
The Washington Court of Appeals recently held that Seattle could not impose a utility tax on revenue derived from international roaming charges (charges for mobile telephone communications that originate in a foreign country). City of Seattle v. T-Mobile West Corp., No. 75423-8-1 (Wash. Ct. App. May 22, 2017)…
By Charles Capouet and Tim Gustafson
On June 15, 2017, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that property tax recovery charges and carrier cost recovery charges imposed by a telecommunications service provider of long distance telephone service on its customers were not subject to service provider tax for the tax years 2008 – 2010. The…
By Alla Raykin and Jonathan Feldman
In an Advisory Opinion, the New York Department of Taxation and Finance concluded that fees paid to a social club by non-members for certain activities (tennis lessons, children’s camp, basketball court use, etc.) are not subject to tax, although membership fees that provide access to the same activities are…
By Open Weaver Banks and Liz Cha
The Arizona Department of Revenue (Department) issued a taxpayer information ruling stating that a taxpayer’s gross income from transactions provided through the use of computer software is not subject to tax under the personal property rental classification for Arizona Transaction Privilege Tax purposes.
The taxpayer’s software provides its…
By Samantha Trencs and Eric Tresh
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued an advisory opinion concluding that a detailed report of customer behavior that includes both client-specific and industry-related information is a service subject to sales and use tax. Tax Law § 1105(c)(1) imposes sales and use tax on information services…
By Jessica Eisenmenger and Open Weaver Banks
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals for District III upheld the Tax Appeals Commission’s decision that separating dredged material from contaminated river water into its constituent parts for the purpose of water pollution remediation constitutes “processing” of tangible personal property and is therefore a taxable service. Tetra Tech EC, …
By Charles Capouet and Maria Todorova
The Franklin County Circuit Court held that Netflix’s subscription-based streaming video service was not subject to Kentucky’s gross revenues tax, excise tax and school tax (telecommunications taxes) imposed on “multichannel video programming service” (MVPS). Under Kentucky law, MVPS is programming “provided by or generally considered comparable to programming provided…
The Virginia Department of Taxation (Department) ruled that a company’s sales of cloud computing services did not create nexus with Virginia for corporate income tax purposes. The Department also said that in applying P.L. 86-272, it uses the same “solicitation” test for both the sales of intangible personal property…
By Hanish Patel and Eric Coffill
The Supreme Court of Virginia held that a city could not impose its consumer utility tax on the natural gas consumed by an electric power company solely for the purpose of generating electricity. Virginia localities are authorized to impose the tax on consumers of natural gas provided by a…
