Michael J. Bologna

The Tennessee Senate threw its support behind Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal overhauling the state’s franchise tax, a plan that a new fiscal analysis found would cost the state $1.9 billion for fiscal year 2025—$300 million more than initially budgeted.

The Multistate Tax Commission plans to revise features of a tax settlement program to sharpen its application of the time period used to determine a taxpayer’s exposure for unpaid sales and use taxes, and employer withholding taxes.

Illinois lawmakers sent Gov. J.B. Pritzker legislation enacting most of the revenue-raising features of his proposed fiscal year 2025 budget, including a higher cap on corporate net operating loss deductions, higher taxes on sports-betting company receipts, and a revamped grocery tax system.

Attorneys representing tech giants Google and Facebook predicted Maryland's courts would eventually strike down the state's first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax as a violation of the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act—perhaps as early as October.

Transfer pricing disputes are most prominently a concern for international tax departments, but state and local tax specialists also pay close attention—particularly as state revenue agencies have ramped up their compliance efforts aimed at tax base erosion due to intercompany transactions.

The Multistate Tax Commission will review a proposal for auditing companies' sales tax compliance prospectively, with a view toward faster dispute resolution and timely, accurate tax collections for states.

The Multistate Tax Commission killed off a project that could have resulted in multiple methods for sourcing trucking industry receipts for tax purposes in a narrow vote by member states Tuesday.

Louisiana Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson floated a framework for a broad tax overhaul Wednesday, but the plan assumes lawmakers’ support during a special legislative session in November and modifications to the state constitution by voters next year.

The Multistate Tax Commission dates to the 1960s, yet the intergovernmental tax agency and its mission on behalf of state revenue departments are often not well understood. The map of tax laws and regulations across the 50 states would be much more complicated and inconsistent without the efforts of committed attorneys, auditors, and administrators working on behalf of the commission.

The Illinois Department of Revenue’s recent court victory over soft-drink giant Pepsi for what it called “shameful and egregious” tax avoidance put the spotlight on an arcane rule that creates opportunities for multinational companies to shift their US profits offshore.