Photo of Diann Smith

Diann Smith

Subscribe to Diann Smith's Posts

Diann Smith focuses her practice on state and local taxation and unclaimed property advocacy. Diann advises clients at any stage of an issue, including planning, compliance, controversy, financial statement issues and legislative activity. Her goal is to find the most effective method to achieve a client's objective regardless of when or how an issue arises. Diann emphasizes the importance of defining a client's objective - whether it is finality of a frequently audited issue, quick resolution of a stand-alone tax liability, or avoiding competitive disadvantages in the application of a tax. The defined objective then governs the choice of the path to a solution. Read Diann Smith's full bio.

Follow: Read more about Diann Smith

“Generally, the only places with gross receipts taxes today are U.S. states and developing countries.” –Professor Richard Pomp, University of Connecticut

As the economy shifts to a digital one, we are finding that states are turning toward unconventional revenue options. One trend we’re seeing is the surprising comeback of the gross receipts tax (GRT):

  • Oregon’s new Commercial Activity Tax (CAT) takes effect January 1, 2020. Oregon officials are currently writing rules to implement it. Portland, Oregon also adopted a 1% gross receipts tax, imposed only on big businesses, starting January 1, 2019.
  • San Francisco voters imposed an additional gross receipts tax on businesses with receipts of more than $50 million beginning January 1, 2019. This is on top of the gross receipts tax that was phased in from 2014 to 2018 to replace the city’s payroll tax.
  • Nevada’s Commerce Tax took effect July 1, 2015, imposing differing tax rates on 26 categories of business with over $4 million in receipts. Part of the revenue was to reduce the state’s MBT payroll tax, but legislators suspended those reductions this year; it’s now in court.
  • Serious proposals to adopt a statewide gross receipts tax keep coming, with the last three years including Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. A San Jose, California gross receipts tax proposal was approved to gather petition signatures in 2016 but eventually morphed into a business license tax overhaul.

…
Continue Reading

Legislators in Sacramento are mulling over one of the most (if not the most) troubling state and local tax bills of the past decade. AB 1270, introduced earlier this year and passed by the Assembly in late May, would amend the California False Claims Act (CFCA) to remove the “tax bar,” a prohibition that exists in the federal False Claims Act and the vast majority of states with similar laws.

If enacted, this bill will open the door for a cottage industry of financially driven plaintiffs’ lawyers to act as bounty hunters in the state and local tax arena. California taxpayers would be forced to defend themselves in high-stakes civil investigations and/or litigation—even when the Attorney General’s Office (AG) declines to intervene. As seen in other states, this racket leads to abusive practices and undermines the goal of voluntary compliance in tax administration.…
Continue Reading

Judicial deference to state tax agencies puts taxpayers at a steep disadvantage and wastes time and resources on costly tax disputes. A united advocacy effort can help promote passage of state-level legislation that takes the tax administrator’s thumb off the scales of justice in administrative and judicial review of tax determinations.

Access the full article.…

California legislators have recently introduced a bill, AB 1270, that would amend the False Claims Act (Act) to strike the tax bar. As introduced, the bill would amend the existing false claims statute in the state of California to expressly authorize tax-related false claims actions against a person whose reported taxable income, net income,…

The District of Columbia (DC) Office of Tax & Revenue (OTR) implemented sweeping changes to the Qualified High Technology Company (QHTC) certification process this year. As you may remember, beginning last year, OTR implemented a new online QHTC self-certification process for companies to obtain exempt purchase certificates. This year, OTR is expanding the scope of…

If the Delaware Office of Unclaimed Property believes that a person may have filed an “inaccurate, incomplete, or false report,” the State Escheator may authorize a “compliance review” under Del. Code Ann. tit. 12, § 1170(b). This is not a standard audit and as a result, the target is not entitled to the option of…

On December 19, 2018, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of McDermott’s client, the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA), the trade association for pharmaceutical distributors. In Healthcare Distribution Alliance v. Zucker, the court granted summary judgment and enjoined enforcement of the New York Opioid Stewardship Act, which imposed a $600 million surcharge on manufacturers and distributors of opioid pharmaceutical products. The first $100 million installment was due on January 1, 2019.…
Continue Reading

DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson recently announced that a public hearing will take place later this month before the Committee of the Whole to consider a bill (The False Claims Amendment Act of 2017, B22-0166) that would allow tax-related false claims against large taxpayers. The hearing will begin at 9:30 am on Thursday,…

While the state treatment of global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) was on the mind of many taxpayers, most state legislatures that enacted legislation in 2018 focused on the state treatment of foreign earnings deemed repatriated under IRC § 965, leaving the state treatment of GILTI unclear in many states. That said, of the states that enacted legislation addressing GILTI, very few have decided to tax a material portion of GILTI.

In states that did not address global intangible low-taxed income through legislation, a lack of clarity in the state laws created an opportunity for the STAR Partnership to seek favorable administrative guidance on the treatment of GILTI. The STAR Partnership pursued that opportunity in a number of states, as discussed in more detail below.…
Continue Reading

Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed in December 2017, over 100 bills were proposed by state legislatures responding to the federal legislation. Thus far in 2018, nearly half of states have passed legislation responding to the TCJA. With some exceptions, in this year’s legislative cycles the state legislatures were primarily focused on the treatment of foreign earnings deemed repatriated and included in federal income under IRC § 965 (965 Income).

The STAR Partnership has been very involved in helping the business community navigate the state legislative, executive and regulatory reaction to federal tax reform, and IRC § 965 in particular. The STAR Partnership’s message to states has been clear: decouple from IRC § 965 or provide a 100 percent deduction for 965 income. The STAR Partnership emphasized that excluding 965 Income from the state tax base is consistent with historic state tax policy of not taxing worldwide income and avoids significant apportionment complexity and constitutional issues. …
Continue Reading