With the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“Tax Reform”) fully enacted, taxpayers and practitioners are racing to find last-minute planning opportunities prior to the new year, and states are looking for ways to assist their residents prospectively. The most talked about planning opportunity, currently, is prepaying property taxes for 2018 to create a 2017 tax benefit around Section 11042(a)(6), which limits the state and local tax deduction to $10,000 beginning in 2018. However, imprecise wording contained within Section 11042(a)(6) could feasibly be interpreted to permit a deduction for state and local income taxes as well – depending on how you read the provision.
On June 12, 2017, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) reintroduced into Congress H.R. 2887, also known as the “No Regulation Without Representation Act of 2017” (the “Legislation”), which codifies the physical presence nexus requirement established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Quill v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992) (“Quill”). The Legislation is interesting for several reasons: (1) it proposes to employ a result that is the exact opposite of the recent trend to overturn Quill; (2) it defines “tax” broadly to include net income and business activity taxes; and (3) it expands the law to require a physical presence for states to regulate a person’s activity in interstate commerce outside of the tax context.
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”).
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (“Department”) has been releasing draft regulations to implement the extensive corporate franchise (income) tax reform that is generally effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2015. Prior coverage can be found here. Recently, the Department issued new draft apportionment regulations on certain statutory categories of receipts, including receipts from sales of tangible personal property, rents and royalties, qualified financial instruments, loans, reverse repurchase agreements and securities borrowing agreements, commodities, marked to market net gains, other financial instruments, credit card and similar activities, credit card processors, services to investment companies, railroad, trucking and omnibus businesses, and advertising.