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The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts issued a private letter ruling concluding that several services provided to optometrists and ophthalmologists were subject to sales tax as data processing.  Specifically, the Comptroller determined that the taxpayer’s web-based software system, which doctors use to manage patient relationships, schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and communicate about treatment, is a…

Mississippi Notice 72-20-09 provides additional guidance on Mississippi’s marketplace facilitator law, which took effect on July 1, 2020. The Notice explains that a sale facilitated and delivered by a third-party food delivery service is not a “retail sale” by the facilitator. Rather, the restaurant will charge sales tax on the selling price it charged for…

The Washington Court of Appeals upheld the Washington Department of Revenue’s denial of a sales tax exclusion for trade-ins of software and hardware. GameStop provides customers with a trade-in credit for software and hardware and allows customers to apply these credits towards future purchases of software and hardware. The Department denied GameStop’s exclusion for two…

The New Jersey Tax Court rejected the Division of Taxation’s application of a five-factor alternative apportionment formula as invalid rulemaking under New Jersey’s Administrative Procedures Act (APA). The Tax Court previously determined that an application of the statutory apportionment formula in effect prior to 2011 for companies without a “regular place of business” outside New…

On December 5, 2018, the Indiana Supreme Court in a 3-2 split decision held that an RV dealership was liable for uncollected sales tax on RV sales even though it delivered the RVs to buyers at out-of-state locations.

The RV dealership’s protocol for transferring possession of its RVs to customers depended on the customer’s state…

The Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board disallowed a deduction for Indiana utility receipts tax (URT) paid by a natural gas distribution operator with operations in Indiana. The deduction for the URT was disallowed, for purposes of computing Massachusetts net income for corporate excise tax, because the URT is not a deductible “transaction tax.” The Board found…

On December 21, the New Jersey Division of Taxation released Technical Bulletin TB-85, which addresses how the Division will expect taxpayers to calculate the amount of so-called global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) and foreign derived intangible income (FDII) that are taxable for New Jersey corporation business tax (CBT) purposes.

Background: GILTI and FDII under Federal …

The California Court of Appeal affirmed a trial court decision finding that transactions involving an Internet retailer headquartered in Brisbane, California, were subject to local use tax, rather than local sales tax, because title in the transactions at issue passed outside California. The court explained that when a retail seller delivers goods to a common…