SALT Blog - SALT Blawg

Since 2017 when the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was enacted and placed a hard cap on state and local tax deductions, critics of the cap have campaigned to reverse it.  These critics (as well as the cap’s proponents) hail from every walk of life and political stripe.  But the mantel against the cap has been taken on most prominently by the Democratic Party and a handful of high-tax States that in recent election cycles have tended to vote Democrats into office, often labeled “Blue States.”  The efforts to overturn the cap have been three-fold: (1) state workaround statutes that seek to end-run the ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of New Hampshire v. Massachusetts, but this is not the last we will hear of the underlying issue.  During October 2020, Massachusetts adopted an emergency regulation addressing remote workers’ tax obligations.  The emergency regulation adopted a “status quo” approach, whereby Massachusetts treated employees who had been working in Massachusetts before the pandemic, but were now working remotely, as if they were still working in Massachusetts.  The tax implication of that policy was that nonresidents working entirely out ...

On January 9, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, No. 17-1299.  A copy of the oral argument transcript can be accessed here.

In Hyatt, the Supreme Court is again revisiting the question of whether one state can be sued in another state’s courts.  The Hyatt litigation has been ongoing for two decades and has been before the U.S. Supreme Court on two previous occasions.  The case involves damages sought by Gilbert P. Hyatt for several torts allegedly committed by the Franchise Tax Board of California (“FTB”) in its ...

On October 2, 2017, South Dakota filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, bringing the first facial challenge to Quill Corp. v. North Dakota in front of the Court.

As mentioned previously, during August the South Dakota Supreme Court held oral arguments wherein South Dakota urged the court to reject its petition, which would allow it to expeditiously file a petition for cert with the US Supreme Court.  The South Dakota Supreme Court abided and quickly affirmed a March 2017 trial court decision granting the remote seller's motion for ...

As our previous post explains, the U.S. Supreme Court had extended the time to file petitions for certiorari in Crutchfield Corp. v. Joseph W. Testa, Tax Commissioner of Ohio (U.S. Supreme Court Docket No. 16A774), involving the Ohio Commercial Activity Tax (“CAT”).  However, prior to the deadline, the parties agreed to forego further litigation and entered into an undisclosed settlement agreement.  As such, the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Ohio CAT stands. See Crutchfield Corp. v. Joseph W. Testa, Tax Commissioner of Ohio, 2016 WL 6775765 (2016).

Those hoping ...

Crutchfield appealed from imposition of the CAT upon revenue it earned from sales of electronic products within Ohio. Crutchfield is based outside of Ohio, maintains no employees in Ohio, and maintains no facilities in Ohio. The sole business that Crutchfield conducts in Ohio is via the shipment of goods from outside the state to consumers within the state using the United States Postal Service or common-carrier delivery services. Crutchfield contested the issuance of CAT assessments contending that substantial nexus within a state is a necessary prerequisite to imposing the tax ...

Just a few weeks ago, Chamberlain Hrdlicka attorneys Stewart M. Weintraub and Adam M. Koelsch, together with Peter L. Faber of McDermott, Will & Emery LLP, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court an amicus brief on behalf of the American College of Tax Counsel in support of the petitioners challenging the Michigan Court of Appeals’ September 2015 decision in Gillette Commercial Operations N. Am. v. Dep't of Treasury.

In the amicus, the attorneys argued that the Court of Appeals  had misapplied the holding of the Supreme Court in United States v. Carlton in order to sustain a retroactive repeal ...