Shaking things up in state and local tax
Shaking things up in state and local tax
By Shane Lord and Prentiss Willson
The Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission held that a telephone company’s interest income received from its parent company was passive, non-Missouri source income and thus excludible from apportionable income as nonbusiness income. The interest income at issue was related to a note between the taxpayer and its parent company pursuant…
By Sahang-Hee Hahn and Andrew Appleby
Effective September 1, 2013, Texas will refund state sales and use taxes paid by providers of cable television, Internet access or telecommunications services on tangible personal property used in their businesses. On June 14, 2013, Governor Rick Perry signed H.B. 1133 into law, authorizing such refunds. Under the new…
By Stephen Burroughs and Timothy Gustafson
The Texas Comptroller determined that receipts received for the delivery of satellite programming to Texas subscribers should be sourced to the site of the subscriber’s set-top box for apportionment purposes. The taxpayer provides direct broadcast satellite television programming to subscribers in Texas and across the United States. For the…
By Shane Lord
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania held that gross receipts received by Verizon in connection with nonrecurring service charges—including telephone line installation, moves of or changes to telephone lines and service, and repairs of telephone lines—were not taxable under the Commonwealth’s gross receipts tax on telephone companies. The court distinguished these nonrecurring services…
A New York State trial court has denied a motion filed by Sprint Nextel Corporation and its subsidiaries (Sprint) to dismiss a claim brought under the New York False Claims Act (FCA) alleging the company knowingly filed false tax returns and underpaid New York State sales taxes on fixed-rate monthly wireless telephone…
By Zachary Atkins and Prentiss Willson
The Colorado Supreme Court held that the Colorado Division of Property Taxation did not violate a public utility’s equal protection and uniformity rights by valuing and taxing its property differently than cable companies’ property. The public utility, Qwest Corporation, is a telecommunications service provider that competes with cable companies for…
By Jessica Kerner and Jack Trachtenberg
The Missouri Department of Revenue determined that a company’s telecommunications services provided to customers on its cloud computer network are subject to sales tax. The company’s cloud network is hosted on servers located outside of the state, and customers access the network through public telecommunications lines and through the…
By Zachary Atkins and Andrew Appleby
The Arizona Court of Appeals held that Cable One, Inc. was subject to central assessment as a telecommunications company because of its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service offering. The court found that Cable One, which provided cable television, Internet access and VoIP services, met the statutory definition of…
By Jessica Kerner and Timothy Gustafson
The Texas Comptroller determined that a taxpayer’s email advertisement services were telecommunications services subject to the state’s sales tax. The taxpayer, a producer of real estate television shows for homebuilders, maintained a website through which it offered Internet-based services. The two services at issue were the taxpayer’s “Hot Sheet&rdquo…
By Zachary Atkins and Timothy Gustafson
The Iowa Supreme Court passed on an opportunity to breathe life into equal protection jurisprudence and, instead, rejected Qwest Corporation’s challenge under the Iowa Constitution to a property tax regime that taxes the personal property of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) but not competitive long distance telephone companies (CLDTCs)…
