One Giant Step Forward for Security (Maybe), One Huge Step Backward for Representation

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Russ

If you are a tax professional who does any representation work, do I have news for you…and it’s not good. Yesterday, the IRS made an announcement about redacting information on transcripts. Here’s an excerpt of the announcement:

Moving to better protect taxpayer data, the Internal Revenue Service today announced a new format for individual tax transcripts that will redact personally identifiable information from the Form 1040 series…The following information will be provided on the new transcript:
• Last 4 digits of any SSN listed on the transcript: XXX-XX-1234
• Last 4 digits of any EIN listed on the transcript: XX-XXX-1234
• Last 4 digits of any account or telephone number
• First 4 characters of the last name for any individual
• First 4 characters of a business name
• First 6 characters of the street address, including spaces
• All money amounts, including balance due, interest and penalties

But there’s more information—information not included in this announcement that’s very important if you do any tax representation work. If a tax professional with authorization (either an IRS Power of Attorney or Tax Information Authorization) calls the IRS up and requests a transcript, we can have it faxed to us (if we have a secure fax machine). Effective January 1, 2019, the IRS will no longer fax transcripts; they will only be mailed, and then, apparently only to the taxpayer’s address of record (not to tax professionals with the appropriate authorization). This is a huge problem.

Consider nonfilers–people not in the system. There is no address in the system to mail anything to. This will slow down work and hinder compliance with tax law.

Next, consider taxpayers who are overseas. Mail to locations outside the United States takes much longer and, in many countries, is of dubious security.

Now those of us with access to IRS E-Services will still be able to download transcripts once the CAF Unit processes the authorization (but see below on two additional issues). But when there’s an immediate issue, and the authorization hasn’t been processed, we will have to tell all involved, “We have to wait for the POA to be processed. Please add two weeks additional to your timeline.” I’m sure IRS Revenue Officers, Tax Compliance Officers, and Revenue Agents will appreciate this.

Unfortunately, there are two other major issues with this policy. First, the redaction of Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) will impact efiling and state tax issues. Let’s assume I request a Wage & Income Transcript for John Smith. Today, that transcript will show the full EIN for any issuers of tax documents. That allows tax professionals to prepare returns that can be electronically filed (EINs are required for efiling). In the future, the transcript will just show “xx-xxx9999” as the EIN. If we happen to have a W-2 on file for that employer we’ll be able to use the EIN; otherwise, that tax return will have to be paper filed. This impacts state tax returns, too. Many states mandate efiling, and also mandate that we provide EINs on the tax return. We will be unable to comply with this in the future for impacted clients.

Additionally, business names will be redacted; only the first four characters will be shown. Imagine seeing “ACME xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx” as the business name. The business address will be redacted (just the first six characters will be shown); our address would be shown as “1919 S”; maybe with the first four characters of our name (CLAY) and those characters you could figure out who we are but I doubt it in a city one-tenth the size of Las Vegas. Basically, when I’m entering W-2s based off a transcript I’ll enter four characters and hope it matches correctly (good luck with that!). As to trying to call someone, how? Clients’ memories of prior years are, much of the time, hazy; the transcripts will be of little use. And many payors listed on information returns are parent companies rather than the payor itself; matching will be near impossible.

(This is also going to make responding to IRS Automated Underreporting Unit (AUR) notices quite interesting. Imagine your client receives such a notice, and all it says is “ACME” and the client says he never worked for ACME. How is a tax professional or the client going to find out the truth? There won’t be near enough information on the notice. You can expect a surge in Tax Court filings in about a year.)

“But Russ,” you ask, “Shouldn’t clients keep good records and all their W-2s (and other tax documents)?” Absolutely, but we have to deal with the world as it is, not how we want it to be. I’ve had two representation clients in the last month who have been victims of casualty losses: One lost all his records because of a fire; the other lost his records due to a flood. And many representation clients simply don’t have the records.

I understand why the IRS is doing this (the security issue) but this is going to make representation clients wait even longer to get their cases resolved, and will make overall compliance worse. It will cause paper filing to increase (not by a huge percentage, but it will still be noticeable) and will impact states, too. Overall, the unintended consequences were not thought out by the IRS.

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When It’s Too Good to be True (Tax Shelter Edition)

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Russ

When reading Tax Court decisions, always be on the lookout for the word “scheme.” It’s usually a heads-up that what you’re reading isn’t going to cut it (from a tax perspective). So when the decision begins,

These consolidated cases involve a complex tax shelter scheme featuring four C corporations, five individual shareholder-employees of the C corporations, five employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), five S corporations, and (inevitably) a partnership. [emphasis added]

You know things aren’t going to end up well for the petitioners.

Rightly concluding that this scheme was too good to be true, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS or respondent) attacked it on numerous grounds for tax years that (owing to calender and fiscal year differences) span 2002-2005. We hold that the “factoring fees” and most of the “management fees” were not deductible expenses of the C corporations but rather were disguised distributions of corporate profits.

So what happened? Actually, a lot of transactions. Thousands of transactions. Make that many thousands of transactions–all designed to get rid of tax.

Implementation of the tax shelter scheme entailed many thousands of cash transfers among 15 entities and individuals. In their proposed findings of fact the parties often do not agree on the net results of these transactions, or even on what the dollar amounts remaining in dispute actually are. We have done our best to work our way through this fog.

First, let me give a fundamental rule in tax: Everything needs an economic substance to be legal. Business transactions can be designed in a tax advantaged way, but there needs to be a real transaction. The scheme involved factoring and management fees. I’m familiar with factoring; it’s common in the garment industry (among other industries). Factoring allows the sale of accounts receivable and the seller to immediately obtain cash; in exchange, the buyer collects the receivables and earns the difference between the sales price and the receivables. The problem was that the way this factoring worked wasn’t the way it works in practice.

While factoring receivables theoretically enabled the Water Companies to accelerate their incoming cashflow, this benefit was illusory given how the “factoring” operated. PMG could not function as a “factor” without the management fees it received from the Water Companies, as shown by the 10-month delay in PMG’s commencement of “factoring.” In effect, the Water Companies had to provide working capital to PMG (rather than the other way around) to enable PMG to purchase the accounts receivable. Given this circular flow of funds, the “factoring” generated no liquidity benefits for the Water Companies…

We conclude that the purported factoring arrangement with PMG had no economic substance but was a device to extract profits from the Water Companies in the guise of tax-deductible payments. The Water Companies derived no economic benefit from this arrangement, and the factoring fees they paid were not “ordinary and necessary” expenses of their business. [internal note omitted]

The factoring also failed an ‘arms-length’ test. When parties are related, the transactions have to follow what I call the disinterested buyer/seller model: What would a disinterested [buyer/seller] pay (or receive) for what’s being sold? A question this court pondered was whether these agreements in practice followed normal factoring practices.

In an arm’s-length factoring arrangement, the factor typically: (1) receives an assignment of accounts receivable from the client, (2) verifies the genuineness of the accounts and balances shown, and (3) immediately pays the client a lump sum equal to the face amount of the receivables less the agreed-upon discount. Mr. Zadek observed that PMG’s payment practices were erratic and regularly flouted these norms. On some occasions PMG would make payment before receiving executed assignments of the receivables and without verifying the account balances. On other occasions PMG would not make the stipulated upfront payment but would instead pay for the receivables in installments, sometimes in seven or eight tranches spread over many months. This was contrary to standard factoring practice, which aims to provide the client with immediate liquidity. The trial evidence supported Mr. Zadek’s conclusion that the timing of the supposed “factoring” payments was largely dictated, not by the terms of the MFAs, but by “when there was money in the bank to do it,” as Ms. Quarry testified.

Add in that the company itself and not the factor did the actual collection efforts (on past due accounts), and you have a facade of factoring and some big tax problems. But, like a bad infomercial, that’s not all! There are also excessive management fees. These were designed to change taxable income into untaxable income. Suffice to say, these didn’t work either.

The conclusion is one I (and others) have been stating for years: There is no Tax Fairy. If you (or your business) makes a lot of income, you will owe tax. Alchemy in the tax world works just as well as alchemy in the physical world: I’ve yet to see someone take lead and turn into gold or some other precious metal. Instead of spending millions on these tax shelter schemes, the businesses’ owners would have done far better using those millions to pay their taxes.

Case: Pacific Management Group v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2018-131

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Can You Spin Garbage Into Gold?

Posted on August 18, 2018 by Russ

I guess I’ll spoil the post:

Rumpelstiltskin could spin straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin, Inc. thought it could do the same for garbage, spinning it into tax credits. The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service disagreed. So did the Tax Court. So do we.

So begins the Appeals Court decision of Green Gas Delaware Statutory Trust v. Commissioner, a decision of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The case involves tax credits for production of landfill gas (the since repealed Section 45K credits). Three entities, all related, with the parent company having the wonderful name Rumpelstiltskin, Inc. (and no, we didn’t make this up) took these tax credits worth $11.7 million while having $4.5 million in income. The IRS audited these returns, and allowed only $586,000 of tax credits. The IRS also turned the entities’ business expenses from gold into straw, disallowing most of them, and threw in a 20% accuracy penalty. The Tax Court upheld the IRS, and the entities appealed that decision.

So where did the tax credits come from?

The overwhelming majority of those claimed credits came from venting/flaring landfills, where RTC made no (and could make no) use of the gas. Green Gas, 147 T.C. at 30…[footnote:] It is, perhaps, no coincidence that some of the intermediary entities were named Bye Bye Gas GP, C U Later Gas GP, Arrivederci Gas GP, Buon Giorno Gas GP, Ciao Gas GP, and Adios Gas GP.

The first problem Rumpelstiltskin had is that the tax credits were designed for production of alternative energy, not venting (or burning) landfill gas. The second problem was that Rumpelstiltskin didn’t keep good records. Seriously, something we tell all clients is that if you keep good records an audit is an annoyance; if you don’t keep good records, an audit will be a very painful and expensive annoyance. And so it was here. Rumpelstiltskin tried to blame two deceased employees who kept 85% of the business logs; however, not only did the Tax Court find the logs (that were produced) unreliable the Court of Appeals asked the obvious question: “…the appellants could have introduced evidence from still-living employees who prepared the remaining 15% of the site logs, and yet chose not to do so.”

Rumpelstiltskin also tried to get the IRS’s rejection of business expenses reversed by the Court of Appeals. An excerpt from the Court of Appeals:

As to the appellants’ claimed deductions for consulting and legal fees, the Tax Court determined that the appellants “failed to provide a credible explanation” for why the consulting fees were “paid by other entities but deductions were claimed by” appellant Green Gas. And it held that the appellants could not claim legal-fee deductions because there was no evidence that any legal work benefited the appellants. Finally, it disallowed various miscellaneous expenses, except to the extent that the appellants could corroborate them with documentation. [citations omitted]

It does help if you are claiming an expense that you actually incur that expense….

There are two serious conclusions that can be drawn from this case. First, where there are tax credits there will be schemers trying to get money from them when it’s undeserved. “It’s free money,” they think. Second, document, document, and document some more. If you keep good records…but I said that above. In any case, as Chief Judge Merrick Garland wrote (who, like me, is a native of Lincolnwood, Illinois), the decision of the Tax Court is affirmed.

Case: Green Gas Delaware Statutory Trust v. Commissioner

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Return to Sender

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Russ

A client was selected for a correspondence audit; the IRS asked the client to submit all the documentation regarding a tax credit taken on a recent return. The client had all the documentation, made his photocopies, and mailed off the notice using certified mail, return receipt requested. Imagine his surprise when three weeks later–two weeks after the deadline to respond–he receives his package back. Did he forget to attach postage? No, he mailed it at a post office. Did he put the incorrect address on the envelope? No, the address matched exactly. Did the post office make a mistake? No, the IRS did.

The client’s response was directed to go to the Andover (Massachusetts) Service Center. Apparently the Andover IRS office no longer gets mail at the address on the notice (a PO Box in Andover). Instead, the mail is redirected to the Service Center’s street address. Surely one agency of the government (the IRS) can communicate to another (the Postal Service), right?

Well, no. The IRS submitted a forwarding order to the Post Office. That order expired. So what happens when a forwarding order expires? The mail is returned to the sender.

Now, my client did nothing wrong–he responded timely. When he received the package back he called the IRS to alert them to the issue (hopefully in time to stop a Notice of Deficiency from being issued). If this matter were to get to the Tax Court, I’m pretty sure the Court wouldn’t be as amused as I was with the IRS’s overall actions. Shouldn’t the IRS be aware of where mail should be sent to?

If this were the only recent example of this I’d take it as a one-off. However, we received a notice from the Memphis Service Center for our own business (asking for a copy of a payroll filing). We duly made the photocopy and my Office Manager went to the Post Office to mail the response (using certified mail, return receipt requested). The Post Office told my Office Manager that they couldn’t take the mail as the address on the notice didn’t exist! I am not making this up. (I called the IRS up and was directed to send this to the Ogden Service Center.)

But consider taxpayers who aren’t represented by professionals or who aren’t as familiar with the IRS. They correctly respond to IRS notices but their responses don’t make it. If I had just put a stamp on the response to Memphis I might not have discovered the response didn’t make it for several weeks (returned mail takes quite a bit of time to get back to the sender). My client may still have to go to Tax Court because of the IRS’s error. These are issues that shouldn’t be happening.

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We’re Not Gonna Take It…

Posted on July 21, 2018 by Russ

You may have heard that earlier this week four states sued to stop parts of the new tax law from going into effect. The states–New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland–don’t like the new $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes on federal tax returns. I believe this lawsuit is doomed; there’s no right in the Constitution to allow deducting of such taxes. This isn’t just my opinion; Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy notes what I think:

They argue not only that the 2017 cap is unconstitutional, but that the federal government has a general obligation to exempt “all or a significant portion of state and local taxes” from the federal income tax. The problem with this argument is simple: nothing in the text or original meaning of the Constitution supports it. To the contrary, the Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress a general power to power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” There is no mandated exemption for income used to pay state or local taxes. There is also no support for the states’ position in Supreme Court precedent, or in the American constitutional tradition more generally.

The humorous thing (to me) is that blue states normally lead in ‘progressiveness’ of their tax systems (that is, higher rates for individuals earning higher incomes). The cap on deductions will primarily hurt high income individuals. Of course, blue states don’t want out-migration of such high income individuals. Perhaps they might look to lower tax rates. Mr. Somin notes they could remove zoning restrictions. As for this lawsuit, it sounds nice to their constituents but it is almost certainly doomed.

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The Real Winners of the 2018 World Series of Poker

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Russ

Over the past two weeks 7,874 competitors (myself included) paid $10,000 to enter the main event of the World Series of Poker. Who would win the money? And how much of the winnings would they actually get to keep?

One important note: I do need to point out that many of the players in the tournament were “backed.” Poker tournaments have a high variance (luck factor). Thus, many tournament players sell portions of their action to investors to lower their risk. It is quite likely that most (if not all) of the winners were backed and will, in the end, only enjoy a portion of their winnings. I ignore backing in this analysis (because the full details are rarely publicized). Now, on to the winners.

Congratulations to John Cynn of Evanston, Illinois for winning the 2018 WSOP Main Event and a cool $8,800,000. After a mammoth 10-hour heads-up battle against Tony Miles (where the chip lead went back and forth), Mr. Cynn finally prevailed when his king-jack flopped trips and all Mr. Miles could muster was queen-high. Mr. Cynn will pay federal income tax, self-employment tax (all nine of the final players are professional gamblers), and Illinois income tax. Of his winnings he’ll lose an estimated $3,860,183 to tax (keeping $4,939,817), a tax burden of 43.87%. Mr. Cynn definitely benefits from tax reform; had he had the same winnings in 2017 he would have owed $4,094,676 so he saves $234,493. Another way of looking at this is his tax burden last year would have been 46.53%. Mr. Cynn has the second highest tax burden of the final nine.

The aforementioned Tony Miles finished in second place. A resident of Jacksonville, Florida, Mr. Miles benefits from Florida’s lack of a personal income tax. Mr. Miles, like all of the Americans at the final table, will owe federal income tax and self-employment tax; he’ll owe an estimated $1,939,341 (38.79%) of his winnings.

Finishing in third place and winning $3,750,000 was Michael Dyer of Houston. Mr. Dyer had the chip lead for the first part of the final table but ran into a full house of held by Mr. Miles. The Texan avoids state income tax but will still lose an estimated $1,449,275 to federal tax (38.65%). Mr. Dyer has the lowest tax burden of the six Americans at the final table (and the second-lowest tax burden overall).

Nicolas Manion of Muskegon, Michigan started the final nine with the chip lead but couldn’t make it through; he ended up in fourth place for $2,825,000. Mr. Manion is the only individual who will end up paying three taxes: federal, state, and city. Michigan has a flat income tax of 4.25% and Muskegon has a city income tax of 0.5%. Still, Mr. Manion is better off in 2018 than if he had won this in 2017; he’ll lose only an estimated $1,217,323 to tax (43.09%).

Joe Cada finished fifth for $2,150,000. If that name sounds familiar, it should: Mr. Cada won the Main Event in 2009. This time around Mr. Cada’s pocket tens lost a classic race against Mr. Miles’s ace-king. Thanks to tax reform, Mr. Cada loses only 40.59% of his winnings to tax ($872,635) compared to 42% back in 2009. Mr. Cada, a resident of Shelby Township, Michigan, owes federal and Michigan tax.

Aram Zobian of Cranston, Rhode Island, ended up in sixth place for $1,800,000. A professional poker player, Mr. Zobian will owe federal and Rhode Island tax. Rhode Island has marginal tax rates up to 5.99%, so it’s in the middle of the pack for states. Overall, Mr. Zobian will owe an estimated $721,821 in tax (40.10%).

Alex Lynskey of Melbourne, Australia finished in seventh place. While the US and Australia have a tax treaty, it does not cover gambling. Thus, of Mr. Lynskey’s $1,500,000 of winnings, he loses 30% off the top to the IRS ($450,000). Australia does not tax gambling winnings for amateur gamblers but it does tax gambling winnings of professional gamblers. The Australian tax system somewhat mirrors ours in that are marginal rates; however, Australia’s top rate is 45% compared to our 37%. The US-Australia Tax Treaty does specify that a foreign tax credit can be taken for taxes paid to the other country. Mr. Lynskey would have paid an estimated $666,296 to the Australian Taxation Office; given the US tax he’s paid that number is reduced to $216,296 (or $292,000 Australian).

In eighth place was Artem Metalidi of Kiev, Ukraine. Mr. Metalidi will pay the least tax of any of the final nine, both in dollars and by percentage. Ukraine has a flat tax rate of 18% plus a 1.5% military tax (a total of 19.5%). Mr. Metalidi will lose only an estimated $243,750 of his $1,250,000 to tax. None of that is going to the IRS: The tax treaty between the Ukraine and the United States exempts gambling winnings from taxation.

Antoine Labat, a professional poker player from Vincenna, France, finished in ninth place. He earned an even $1 million, but that’s before taxes. The United States and France have a tax treaty exempting gambling winnings, so he lost nothing to Uncle Sam. However, France is anything but a low-tax environment. While 2018 French tax rates have not been announced (they’re not announced until late in the year), based on 2017 rates Mr. Labat will lose $432,574 (€369,721) of his $1 million (€854,701) winnings to taxes.

Here’s a table summarizing the tax bite:

Amount won at Final Table $28,075,000
Tax to IRS $9,811,437
Tax to Illinois Department of Revenue $435,600
Tax to France Tax Administration $432,574
Tax To State Fiscal Service (Ukraine) $243,750
Tax to Australia Tax Agency $216,296
Tax to Michigan Department of Treasury $211,438
Tax to Rhode Island Division of Taxation $37,978
Tax to City of Muskegon Treasurer Department $14,125
Total Tax $10,953,198

That means 39.01% of the winnings of the final nine will go to taxes. That’s up from 2017 because last year four of the final nine faced no taxation (they were all residents of the United Kingdom which does not tax gambling winnings).

Here’s a second table with the winners sorted by their estimated take-home winnings:

Winner Before-Tax Prize After-Tax Prize
1. John Cynn $8,800,000 $4,939,817
2. Tony Miles $5,000,000 $3,060,659
3. Michael Dyer $3,750,000 $2,300,725
4. Nicolas Manion $2,825,000 $1,607,677
5. Joe Cada $2,150,000 $1,277,365
6. Aram Zobian $1,800,000 $1,078,179
8. Artem Metalidi $1,250,000 $1,006,250
7. Alex Lynskey $1,500,000 $833,704
9. Antoine Labat $1,000,000 $567,426
Totals $28,075,000 $16,871,802

Mr. Metalidi finished in eighth place but based on after-tax winnings he finished in seventh place. The Ukraine’s low flat-rate income tax gives him a benefit over the relatively high taxes in Australia.

But the true winner this year was the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS’s take of $9,811,437 exceeds the combined after-tax winnings of the first and second place winners ($8,000,476) and nearly exceeds the top three! Taxes may be what we pay for a civilized society, but we sure pay a lot of them. One truism this year (as usual) is that the house (the IRS) always wins.

Posted in Gambling | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Amazing, Incredible, Expanding Postcard!

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Russ

When I was a child, people used postcards to save on postage. Postage for postcards ran a nickel. That was less than a phone call. Today, with the emergence of cellphones, the only postcards I receive are advertisements. But the IRS has a better idea! Let’s put Form 1040 on a postcard! [Insert groans from the tax professional community] “It’s so simple that a child can do it!” [Let’s add some groans from all the parents out there.]

Indeed page 1 of the draft Form 1040 is simple and straightforward. You enter your name, address, filing status, and you sign the return on page 1. Page 2 looks simple: You note your wages, other items of income, write in your tax, note some credits, and you’re done. But then you see some interesting words, like Line 6:

6. Additional income and adjustments to income. Attach Schedule 1.

That’s one way to make things fit on a postcard: Add more postcards! And it’s not as if most people will be skipping Schedule 1; it includes business income (Schedule C), capital gains (Schedule D), rental income and partnerships (Schedule E), and IRA deductions and all adjustments to income. And there’s not one of these schedules, but six of them. Here’s a link to the draft Form 1040 and all six of the proposed schedules.

It’s time to be honest: Nothing has gotten simpler. Indeed, I would argue everything about the 2018 tax return has gotten far, far more complex. Take line 9 of the draft Form 1040 (on page 2 of the form):

9. Qualified business income deduction (see instructions).

I pity those people trying to do that deduction themselves. I guarantee that most who try to do that line themselves will be joining me with gray hair next year. (The best explanation I’ve seen of that deduction runs 32 accountant-friendly pages. That is not a joke. Another tax professional used the line “Rube Goldbergesque” to describe the deduction.) It’s near a certainty that do-it-yourselfers are going to have issues with these forms. They’re not straightforward.

As I’ve told all of my friends I have lifetime employment. I think the IRS just gave me a second lifetime worth of employment!

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The FBAR Is *Not* Due Tomorrow

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Russ

Most tax-related deadlines are on the 15th of various months. Income tax returns for individuals are due on April 15th; the extended deadline is October 15th. But just to have fun with us there are some exceptions. One of these used to be the FBAR—the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (Form 114).

The FBAR used to be due on June 30th, and that was a receipt deadline. Almost every other deadline in tax is a postmark deadline; for example, if you mail your tax return on April 15th and it takes a month to get to the IRS it’s still considered timely filed. That wasn’t the case for the FBAR. Luckily, Congress changed the law.

Beginning with 2016 FBARs (those filed last year) the deadline was changed to be concurrent with the tax deadline (April 15th). There’s an automatic six-month extension until October 15th. A few years ago the FBAR changed and now must be electronically filed. It now also does not have to be accepted by the deadline to be considered timely; it only has to be filed by the deadline.

Every year I get asked by a few clients, “Russ, why haven’t you reminded me about the FBAR deadline at month-end?” I’m happy to tell them that’s simply no longer the case.

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Wayfair and Economic Nexus

Posted on June 24, 2018 by Russ

Last week the Supreme Court ruled in South Dakota v. Wayfair that South Dakota’s law forcing Wayfair, an Internet retailer, to collect (and remit) sales tax to South Dakota (a state that it did not have physical nexus to) was valid. The decision overrides a previous Supreme Court decision called Quill Corp. v. North Dakota). There’s been plenty of excellent coverage on this ruling (see, for example, the Tax Foundation and Kelly Erb). But I’m wondering what this means for income tax and economic nexus.

A few states have passed laws stating that if you have economic nexus to a state you need to file a tax return to that state. California is one such state. Eventually, cases on economic nexus will go through the court system (and with a certainty the US Supreme Court will have the final say). While no one knows how the Court will rule on such cases, there are indications.

From a case called Complete Auto: “The Court will sustain a tax so long as it (1) applies to an activity with a substantial nexus with the taxing State, (2) is fairly apportioned, (3) does not discriminate against interstate commerce, and (4) is fairly related to the services the State provides.” In Wayfair, the Court ruled that “Physical presence is not necessary to create a substantial nexus.”

The key point is noted by Justice Kennedy:

The Court has consistently explained that the Commerce Clause was designed to prevent States from engaging in economic discrimination so they would not divide into isolated, separable units. See Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U. S. 617, 623 (1978). But it is “not the purpose of the [C]ommerce [C]lause to relieve those engaged in interstate commerce from their just share of state tax burden.” Complete Auto, supra, at 288 (internal quotation marks omitted). And it is certainly not the purpose of the Commerce Clause to permit the Judiciary to create market distortions. “If the Commerce Clause was intended to put businesses on an even playing field, the [physical presence] rule is hardly a way to achieve that goal.” Quill, supra, at 329 (opinion of White, J.).

So four questions need to be answered for whether a state can tax a service business conducting no services within that state. Let’s assume there’s a tax preparation business in Nevada that has customers in New York, and New York passes a law saying that if you have any sales to New York residents you must pay New York state income tax and register your business in New York. The questions that must be answered are: Is their substantial nexus to New York, is the tax fairly apportioned, does it discriminate against interstate commerce, and is the tax fairly related to the services that New York provides. We’ll assume the tax is fairly apportioned.

Consider a Nevada tax professional who has one client in New York out of one thousand total clients. Is there substantial nexus? Almost certainly not, and it would be hard to see such a tax passing muster. Thus, some sort of de minimis rule is necessary. Note that in the instant case that the South Dakota law has such a rule.

Consider now a Nevada tax professional who has 200 clients in New York out his one thousand clients. We’ll assume that passes the de minimis hurdle. The two other questions (and I think they’re linked) come into play: Is the tax fairly related to services that New York provides and does it discriminate against interstate commerce?

The first of these questions has two sides. All of the work done here (remember, this is a service business) is being done in Nevada, not New York. That leads to a conclusion that New York income tax is not related to services provided by New York. (However, if New York had a sales tax on services the business would likely need to comply.) On the other hand, the person contracting for the services is a New York resident.

I think the first argument is the better one. The income being earned is based off of work done in Nevada, not New York. Nevada, not New York, has the right to tax its residents on income earned in the state. Because of this, I think that if New York were to tax such income it would discriminate against interstate commerce. (There is an other side to this argument, though. New York can argue that there would be a tax credit available, and that would eliminate the issue. Still, the filing of the return adds to the burden of the Nevada taxpayer, and is an issue.)

That there are two sides to this argument shows that there is no one right answer. In the end, the Courts will end up making the decision about economic nexus and income tax. Indeed, sometime around 2021 I expect a Supreme Court decision on this issue.

Posted in Legislation, Sales Tax | Tagged | Comments Off on Wayfair and Economic Nexus

Gambling with an Edge Podcast

Posted on June 22, 2018 by Russ

I was the guest on this week’s Gambling with an Edge podcast. You can download the podcast here or on iTunes. The main point of discussion was the new tax law, but we covered some other topics such as bad tax states for gamblers, the Cincinnati Reds’ bobblehead case, and yesterday’s ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair.

Posted in Gambling, Taxable Talk | Tagged | Comments Off on Gambling with an Edge Podcast