On April 12, 2021, Maryland legislators passed Senate Bill 787, which proposed several significant amendments to Marylandâs 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…
As part of the growing trend of states seeking to tax digital activities and data, New York is considering yet another data tax proposal that would tax the collection of personal data for commercial purposes. This latest proposalâwhich is contained in Senate Bill 4959âwould impose a new excise tax âon the collection of consumer data of individual New York consumers by commercial data collectors.â  The tax would apply regardless of how the data is collected, whether by electronic or other means. Under the proposal, âconsumer dataâ is âany information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with a consumer, whether directly submitted to the commercial data collector by the consumer or derived from other sources,â and a âconsumerâ includes individuals who purchase goods or services from a commercial data collector and individuals who use the services of a commercial data collector, whether charged for those services or not. A âcommercial data collectorâ is a âfor-profit entity that: (i) collects, maintains, uses, processes, sells or shares consumer data in support of its business activities; and (ii) collects consumer data, other than consumer contact information, on more than one million individual New York consumers in a month within the calendar year.â  The bill would add the tax to a new section 186-h, within Article 9 of the New York Tax Law.
The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the Mississippi Chancery Court’s decision in Mississippi Depât of Rev. v. AT&T Corp., Dkt. No. 2015-CA-00600-SCT (Miss. S. Ct. 10/27/2016), holding that the Mississippi dividend exclusion statute was unconstitutional under the dormant aspect of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.Â