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At the 10-Yard Line: New York Formally Proposes Corporate Tax Reform Regulations

On August 9, 2023, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (Department) released 417 pages of proposed regulations, an important step toward concluding a now almost decade-long process to implement corporate tax reform.

The journey began in 2014 with the enactment of legislation modernizing the state’s corporate tax law. Thereafter, the Department released several versions of draft regulations while warning taxpayers that the drafts were “not final and should not be relied upon.” Even though the Department announced last spring that it intended to formally propose and adopt such regulations in fall 2022, taxpayers had to wait another year.

Comments on the proposed regulations must be provided to the Department by October 10, and the regulations will be finalized thereafter. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at a few of the items included in the proposed regulations.

ADOPTION OF THE MULTISTATE TAX COMMISSION’S INTERPRETATION OF P.L. 86-272

Consistent with the Department’s final version of the draft regulations, the proposed regulations contain rules based on model regulations adopted by the Multistate Tax Commission, which narrowly interpret P.L. 86-272. Under the proposed regulations, “interacting with customers or potential customers through the corporation’s website or computer application” exceeds P.L. 86-272 protection. By contrast, “a corporation will not be made taxable solely by presenting static text or images on its website.” This sweeping change remains surprising because P.L. 86-272 is a federal law, the scope of which is not addressed by the state’s corporate tax reform.

THE ELIMINATION OF THE “UNUSUAL EVENTS” RULE

The proposed regulations omit the “unusual events” rule contained in the 2016 draft regulations. Generally consistent with Department regulations long predating the state’s corporate tax reform legislation, the 2016 draft stated that “business receipts from sales of real, personal, or intangible property that arose from unusual events” were not included in the business apportionment factor. For example, a consulting firm that sold its office building for a gain would not have included the gain in its apportionment factor because the sale was considered to be from an unusual event. The Department claims to have abandoned the rule “because Tax Reform provided significantly more detailed sourcing rules, including guidelines for those transactions that might have been excluded under pre-reform policy.”

SAFE HARBOR SOURCING FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Post-reform corporate tax law sources receipts from digital products and digital services to New York if the location the customers derive value from is in New York as determined by a complicated hierarchy of methods. The proposed regulations provide a simplified safe harbor in applying this sourcing rule, where “if the corporation has more than 250 business customers purchasing substantially similar digital products or digital services as purchased by the particular customer . . . and no more than 5% of receipts from such digital products or digital services are from that particular customer, then the primary use location of the digital product or digital service is [...]

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Illinois DOR Proposes Use Tax Nexus Standards for Trade Show Retailers

The Illinois Department of Revenue (Department) has issued a proposed new administrative rule addressing the nexus implications for out-of-state retailers attending trade shows in Illinois. The proposed rule, linked here, reaffirms the Department’s long-standing position that all sales made at an Illinois trade show are subject to Illinois Retailers Occupation Tax and any applicable local taxes. In a move welcomed by taxpayers, the proposed rule goes on to delineate a “safe harbor” of activities that will not create nexus for out-of-state retailers with respect to their other Illinois sales.

Under the safe harbor provision, an out-of-state retailer’s presence at an Illinois trade show will not create nexus for its other Illinois sales if each of the following conditions is met:

  1. The retailer attends no more than two trade shows per calendar year;
  2. The retailer is physically present at the two trade shows for an aggregate total of no more than eight days during any calendar year; and
  3. Combined gross receipts from sales made at the two trade shows during any single calendar year do not exceed $10,000.

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Retailers, Such as IT and Pharmaceutical Vendors, Among Businesses Targeted by Texas Comptroller’s Proposed Rule Change

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts recently proposed amendments to 34 Tex. Admin. Code 3.584 relating to the reduced rate available under the Texas Franchise Tax for retailers and wholesalers. These proposed revisions, which appear to formalize elements of informal guidance issued in August of 2015, have the potential to substantially impact a great number of businesses, specifically in the information technology and pharmaceutical industries.

The Texas Franchise Tax is imposed on taxable business entities, including corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies, doing business in the state of Texas. The generally applicable tax rate is 0.75 percent of “taxable margin”—which is itself computed under a complex set of statutes and regulations—however, the rate is reduced to 0.375 percent for entities “primarily engaged in retail or wholesale trade. To qualify for the reduced rate, a business must meet two statutory thresholds: first, it must earn more revenue from retail or wholesale trade activities than it earns from all other business activities; and second, it must earn less than 50 percent of its retail or wholesale trade revenues from the sale of products it or an affiliate entity produces. Tex. Tax Code § 171.002(c). The current version of Rule 3.584 (the Rule) clarifies that, for purposes of the second statutory threshold, a product is not considered to be produced by the retailer if “modifications made to the acquired product do not increase its sales price by more than 10 percent.” In other words, there is a safe harbor under the Rule for retailers who make some modifications to products they sell; so long as those modifications do not increase the product’s sale price by more than 10 percent, the sales of those products will not factor into the second statutory threshold. This is currently the only guidance provided by regulation regarding the scope of the “primarily engaged in” standard.

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