B&I Lawyers Write About the Latest Developments in State Taxes For ACMA Members

On December 1, 2015, Martin I. Eisenstein and David W. Bertoni published “Inside the See-Saw Of State Taxes,” the latest entry for their Legal Corner blog available only to members of the American Catalog Mailers Association.  In their blog post, the authors review the status of federal legislative efforts, including the Marketplace Fairness Act, the Remote Transactions Parity Act, and the Online Sales Simplification Act of 2015, including the key players and major issues; discuss the mounting aggressiveness of state tax departments to expand their tax jurisdiction (including Alabama’s new rule seeking to expand sales tax nexus from a bright-line physical presence rule to an amorphous “economic presence” requirement); and the growing threat of gross receipts taxes that likewise seek to displace the longstanding physical presence requirement for state taxation of direct marketers.  The authors, along with their partner Matthew Schaefer, are currently representing three direct marketers in the first constitutional challenges to the Ohio Commercial Activity Tax (a gross receipts tax) to reach the Supreme Court of Ohio, a tax created with the specific intent to displace the physical presence requirement.  The authors also report on the efforts of TruST, R Street, Americans for Tax Reform, Freedom Works, Heritage Action for America, and the Heartland Institute to ensure that the voices of direct marketers are heard in Congress.