The Indiana Tax Court recently ruled in favor of The University of Phoenix, Inc. (“University of Phoenix”) on an important issue of first impression involving the sourcing of service revenue for purposes of computing Indiana’s corporate income tax apportionment factor. The University of Phoenix, Inc. v. Indiana Dep’t of State Revenue, Cause No. 49T10-1411-TA-00065 (Ind. Tax Ct. 2017). Baker & McKenzie LLP represented the University of Phoenix in the case. The Tax Court held that in sourcing service revenue, Indiana law requires a taxpayer activity/cost-based analysis and rejected the market/customer-based analysis historically advanced by the Indiana Department of State Revenue (“Department”).
On December 15, 2017, the conferees working on reconciling the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“Tax Bill”) released legislative text and a Joint Explanatory Statement. It is expected that the Tax Bill will be passed and signed into law by President Trump. The Tax Bill contains numerous provisions impacting the personal income tax, the estate tax, the taxation of pass through entities, and the corporate income tax. This blog focuses on the U.S. state and local corporate income tax implications of the most significant aspects of the corporate income tax provisions of the Tax Bill.
In a 4-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court found that royalty payments from a related party must be “actually taxed by another state” to qualify for the “subject-to-tax” exception to Virginia’s addback statute. In Kohl’s Dep’t Stores Inc. v. Virginia Dep’t of Taxation, Record No. 160681 (Va. 2017), the court read Virginia’s “subject-to-tax” exception to apply on a post-apportionment, rather than a pre-apportionment, basis.
Pop quiz: when it comes to business earnings, the State of Texas imposes: (a) an income tax; (b) a business activity tax that is not an income tax; or (c) no tax at all. Good news (or bad news)—no matter which answer you chose, you may be right (or wrong). Right now, the answer appears to be (b), but in a few months we may find out that the answer is actually (a), and barring a change of course by the State Legislature, the answer may be (c) in the near future. One thing is clear; the Texas Franchise Tax (or “margin tax,” as it is colloquially known), is in a state of flux.