Wayfair, What’s Fair, and Undue BurdenMichael Fatale, deputy general counsel at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and adjunct professor at Boston College Law School, discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., 138 S. Ct. 2080 (2018). After revisiting the Supreme Court’s prior holdings in and the history of National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Dep’t of Rev. of Illinois (1967) and Quill Corp. v. North Dakota (1992), Fatale then turns to the history and text of the South Dakota statute at issue in Wayfair. Finally, he considers the legal theories evaluated by the Supreme Court in Wayfair — in particular the notions of discrimination, due process, and undue burden. The article was originally published in the Chapman Law Review and is made available here by permission. Read more
Current Economic ConditionsElliott Dubin and intern Emma Snyder of the MTC, using data from a number of sources, provides a snapshot of current economic condition of the states; and, a forecast of economic conditions in the near future. Needless to say, the current economic conditions of the states vary widely; and, even short-term predictions of the economy are not always precise. Read more
Fifty years of MTC Uniformity EffortsThe Not-So-Obvious Lessons Like uniformity itself, the efforts to achieve uniformity also serve a greater purpose. This article by Helen Hecht, MTC general counsel, explains why. Read more
States Should Embrace GILTI or Pursue an Alternative Path to FairnessIn this article, Brian Hamer, MTC counsel, argues for states either to follow the lead of the federal government and tax Global Intangible Low Taxed Income (GILTI) or to adopt an alternative approach to address international income shifting by global enterprises. The article describes the federal tax on GILTI which is part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the reasons that motivated Congress to act and which equally to states, the magnitude of global income shifting by U.S. corporations and the adverse impact on state tax bases, the inadequacy of traditional tools to address this problem, and the key legal issues that relate to state taxation of GILTI. Read more
MTC New Uniformity Model - Partnership Project At a special Commission meeting on January 24th, 2019, the Multistate Tax Commission adopted the Model Uniform Statute for Reporting Adjustments to Federal Taxable Income and Federal Partnership Audit Adjustments as a uniformity recommendation to the states.Read more
Steiner v. Utah Tax CommissionOn November 26, 2018, the MTC filed an amicus brief in the Utah Supreme Court on behalf of the Utah Tax Commission in Steiner v. Utah Tax Commission. In its brief, the MTC explained that Utah’s individual income tax comports with both the dormant interstate Commerce Clause and the dormant foreign Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, notwithstanding the fact that Utah’s tax does not allow its residents to apportion their income and does not provide a credit for national and substantial taxes their residents pay to foreign jurisdictions. Utah generally taxes 100% of residents’ income and provides a credit for taxes paid to other U.S. states. Virtually all state broad-based individual income taxes around the country are structured in relevant respects like the Utah tax. Read more
More info