true object

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In Letter Ruling 22-02 (publicly released last week), the Tennessee Department of Revenue ruled that fees a marketplace facilitator charges for connecting buyers and sellers and processing payments are not subject to sales tax. The taxpayer in the ruling was a “delivery network company” under Tennessee law. It connects third-party sellers of tangible personal property…

On April 21, the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services released Ruling no. 2022-2, finding that online learning plans were not taxable digital goods. The company offers various learning plans which address educational needs through virtual learning and on-demand digital courses in academic subjects, professional topics, and vocational licensure preparation courses. The company’s platform is…

The Tennessee Department of Revenue ruled recently that an information technology company’s platform product was subject to Tennessee sales and use tax. The platform was used to support a decision-making process.

The platform was hosted on Taxpayer or third-party servers, and users accessed the platform from their employer’s electronic software system. The platform was highly…

In a pending precedential decision, the California Office of Tax Appeals (OTA) held that the true object of a taxpayer’s prenatal imaging business involving elective 3D and 4D ultrasound services is the sale of images captured on tangible medium such as photos, CDs and DVDs.  Thus, receipts from such sales are subject to sales…

 By Liz Cha and Todd Lard

Applying the “true object” test to the taxpayer’s web-based services, the Tennessee Department of Revenue ruled that charges for granting access to the taxpayer’s website for purposes of obtaining information would not be subject to sales tax. While the access to web-based services is tax-exempt as a sale of…

By Nicole Boutros and Jeff Friedman

The Director of the Arizona Department of Revenue affirmed an Administrative Law Judge determination that a taxpayer must pay the Transaction Privilege Tax on sales of access to the taxpayer’s subscription-based online research service. The Director reasoned that these sales were taxable as rentals of tangible personal property—and not…

By Mary Alexander and Andrew Appleby

The Tennessee Court of Appeals held a wide area network (WAN) service provided by IBM was not taxable because the true object of the service was not a “telecommunications service.” IBM’s WAN service was a technological infrastructure that enabled remote access to information by linking geographically separated computers. The…

By Shane Lord and Timothy Gustafson

The Tennessee Court of Appeals held that a taxpayer’s wholesale service of converting end-user information into Internet protocol was an “enhanced” service for which the true object or primary purpose was to provide the non-taxable service of “Internet access” and not the taxable service of “telecommunications.” Adopting definitions set forth…