After years of litigation, injunctions, and a U.S. Supreme Court decision, the controversy between Data & Marketing Association (“DMA”) (formerly Direct Marketing Association) and the State of Colorado has come to a conclusion. On February 22, 2017, DMA and the Colorado Department of Revenue (the “Department”) entered into an agreement (the “Settlement Agreement”) resolving the dispute in Direct Mktg. Ass’n v. Colo. Dep’t of Revenue, Colo. Dist. Ct., No. 13-CV-34855, which involved a challenge to the Colorado use tax reporting requirements enacted in 2010. (The Settlement Agreement is available at http://thedma.org/wp-content/uploads/DMA-Colorado-Executed-Settlement-Agreement.pdf.) Under the Settlement Agreement, the Department agrees that compliance with those use tax reporting requirements will not be required until July 1, 2017 and agrees to waive any and all penalties for non-collecting retailers who failed to comply with the use tax reporting requirements prior to July 1, 2017. So on July 1, 2017, a new day of use tax notification and reporting enforcement will dawn in Colorado – and it would not be surprising if other states follow suit.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2017-2018 New York State Executive Budget Bill (“FY 2018 Budget Bill”), proposes several tax-related changes, including changes to various tax credits, the real estate transfer tax, and the state sales and use tax. This post summarizes the FY 2018 Budget Bill’s key sales and use tax proposals, which are similar to proposals made in the Governor’s 2015-2016 New York State Executive Budget Bill (“FY 2016 Budget Bill”).
Texas—never known for doing anything on a small-scale—is starting off 2017 with what is likely to be billions of dollars worth of good news for the Comptroller. On January 6, the Third District Court of Appeals released a substituted opinion in American Multi-Cinema Inc. v. Hegar, No. 03-14-00397-CV, a case dealing with the scope of the Texas franchise tax costs of goods sold (“COGS”) deduction. The Comptroller’s office predicted that the court’s original decision, issued…
In a decision that may foretell the future of business privilege tax nexus, the Washington Supreme Court in November upheld the imposition of the state’s business & occupation (B&O) tax on an out-of-state distributor with respect to sales that were not generated by the distributor’s in-state office. In Avnet Inc. v. Dep’t of Rev., Dkt. No. 92080-0 (Wash. 2016), the Court effectively killed any notion that transactional nexus is required to impose the B&O tax—a tax on the privilege of doing business in Washington. This case, coupled with the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in Crutchfield v. Testa, which was decided one week before Avnet and involved Ohio’s similar Commercial Activity Tax (CAT), continue the trend of aggressively pursuing nexus in the business privilege tax context.