New Hampshire vs. Taxachusetts: How the story ends

In what could be my last post in a long line of posts covering the Town Fair Tire Centers v. Commissioner of Revenue, Massachusetts case – the seminal Interstate Commerce case regarding sales/use tax in these times – the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday, August 25th, that Town Fair Tire Centers is not required [...]

Will any origin-based sourcing SST states remain 01-01-10?

One of the chief concerns among several SST member states – including Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, as well as the Virginia Association of Counties – is whether the option to have origin-based sourcing rules will remain once the scheduled January 1, 2010 expiration date has come and gone. The states [...]

NYC Speaks to the Online Hotel Booking Issue

In ongoing Sales Tax Buzz coverage of online hotel room booking services (see here, here, here, and here), New York City’s Department of Finance recently weighed in on the issue in a first memorandum (a second is scheduled to follow later this month) addressing the recently revised rules surrounding hotel room occupancy tax there. Effective [...]

Deduct state and local income or state and local sales taxes?

April 15th was ages ago, right? And why am I touching on income tax planning in a transaction tax blog? I’m honing in on just one aspect of what should be the year-round exercise of income tax planning, in this case the choice between deducting state and local income taxes and deducting state and local [...]

Cocaine doesn’t pay, not even for Tennessee’s DOR

Court finds TN illegal drug tax unconstitutional; Department of Revenue must say goodbye to $55,316.84 slated to benefit state and local law enforcement agencies Tennessee’s Supreme Court recently heard a particularly interesting tax case, decided on state constitutional grounds having to do with the scope of the state’s taxing authority. The case, Waters v. Farr, [...]

All’s not quiet in Aspen

It’s hard to make ends meet today and even the rich (well, house-rich) try to make an extra buck when they can renting out their vacation (or first, second, or third) homes. But localities are having just as much trouble making ends meet, so they’re on the offensive searching for unreported tax revenues. The Finance [...]

British Columbia to Follow Ontario’s Harmonized Sales Tax Lead

As of July 1, 2010, B.C. to become an HST province, slated to boast the lowest HST rate of provinces that have harmonized Back in early April, when I was fixated on the ostensibly acausal connections among Facebook fodder, an obsession with transaction tax issues, and biology, I structured the discussion around the move for [...]