Connecticut legislative leaders recently announced support for a digital advertising tax (“Connecticut Digital Advertising Tax”) proposed by the Connecticut Joint Committee on Finance, Revenue and Bonding (the “Finance Committee”). Connecticut joins Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas, among others, as states with concrete digital advertising tax proposals on the table (and in Maryland’s case, an enacted law).
On April 12, 2021, Maryland legislators passed Senate Bill 787, which proposed several significant amendments to Maryland’s digital ad tax (see Maryland Passes Digital Advertising Gross Revenues Tax After Overriding Veto). Governor Larry Hogan declined to take action with respect to signing or vetoing Senate Bill 787. As a result, the legislation automatically became law, effective May 12, 2021. Most notably, Senate Bill 787 delays the effective date of the digital advertising tax to tax…
State legislators in the Massachusetts House of Representatives recently introduced four bills on the taxation of digital advertising services. Two of these bills propose a tax on digital advertising services, a third bill would set up a “special commission” to study how to generate revenue from digital advertising, and a fourth bill appears to be a placeholder for some action on digital advertising taxation. This makes Massachusetts one of the latest states to join the wave of state digital advertising tax proposals targeting large digital advertising service providers. We have previously covered Maryland’s digital advertising tax, the first in the nation to become law, and various other states’ pending digital and data tax proposals, including New York and Texas. Below, we summarize and compare the various Massachusetts proposals.
Texas has now joined the growing number of states proposing digital advertising taxes that we have covered previously on SALT Savvy, including Maryland’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax law and other proposals from Connecticut, New York, and Montana. This new Texas bill—H.B. 4467— would take effect in 2022. The Texas proposal is very similar to the recently-enacted Maryland digital ad tax (H.B. 732) and would impose a new “digital advertising tax” on annual gross revenues derived…