Here at Noonan’s Notes Blog, we previously covered the substance of the Governor’s Proposed FY 2019 Budget here and the Final Budget here. On May 25, 2018, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (the “Department”) issued a Technical Memorandum—TSB-M-18(4)I—providing its summary of the personal income tax changes enacted in the final 2018-2019 budget. The TSB-M is available here.
2018 has been an amazing year for tax practitioners. Since the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, practitioners have been scrambling to understand the implications of the federal tax overhaul and to begin work on implementing new strategies for clients. And though the legislation obviously occurred at the federal level, many SALT practitioners have been dealing with the dramatic fallout at the state level as well, since aspects of the federal tax reform have had complicating and unexpected ramifications for state tax purposes.
As state tax lawyers, we are often asked for advice on navigating different—and often competing—state tax schemes. The law in this area is subject to a handful of constitutional limitations. For instance, the Commerce Clause requires (among other things) that state taxes be fairly apportioned. So in the case of nonresidents and other out-of-state or multistate taxpayers, many state tax schemes determine the taxability of a transaction or person based on the numbers of days spent in the taxing state. Consequently, our advice to nonresident taxpayers often turns on the number of “days” involved. This concept of counting “days” is actually pretty important in our world! But one thing that can be interesting in these cases is seeing how different states treat seemingly similar situations or transactions.
On May 15, 2018, Amazon Services, which assists third parties selling their products through the online Amazon Marketplace, sent an email notifying third-party sellers that “Amazon has received a valid and binding legal demand from the New York State Department of Revenue (DOR)” (we assume the request came from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance—the state agency responsible for administering tax laws in New York State). According to Amazon’s email, Amazon plans to release the following information to New York regarding its third-party sellers by June 1, 2018:
On March 7, 2018, the NY Tax Department issued its first income tax advisory opinion of the year. The content of the advisory opinion, a review of the rules governing the timing of the tax credits associated with the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, isn’t particularly noteworthy. What struck us here at Noonan’s Notes, and made the opinion blog-worthy, is the timing of the opinion. Though the Tax Department has many functions (e.g., return design and processing, enforcement/audit, tax collection, etc.), this opinion may illustrate that additional resources should be allocated to its interpretation and education functions.
Yesterday we put out an "Alert" the Governor’s final 2019 budget bill. It contains everything you need to know about what tax provisions passed in the budget (and what did not pass).
Here at the Noonan’s Notes Blog, we’ve been following the process closely (see my prior report on the proposed budget here). Here’s my take on how everything shook out:
For years we’ve been following a ticking income tax time bomb of sorts, dealing with a big 2017 issue for hedge fund managers receiving deferred income. We first started talking about this in 2013 (click here for the article) and followed-up on it a few times later (including here), wondering how states would react to all this. But up until last week, we’ve heard nothing from the New York tax department on the issue.
New Tribunal Case Offers Up a New Framework for Answering this Question
New York’s two-part test for statutory residency has been heavily litigated over the years, and one of the biggest issues has involved the determination as to whether a taxpayer maintained a “permanent place of abode.” In 2014, the State’s highest court in Gaied v. NYS Tax Appeals Tribunal struck down the Tax Department’s overly-broad interpretation of “permanent place of abode” in favor of a more sensible interpretation. In doing so, the High Court declared that in order for a place to constitute a permanent place of abode (“PPA”), “there must be some basis to conclude that the dwelling was utilized as the taxpayer’s residence.” And later in the decision, the Court opined that to qualify as a PPA, “the taxpayer must, himself, have a residential interest in the property”
Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a State Disaster Emergency for counties affected by the March 2018 Nor’easters that began early this month. If you hadn’t heard the term before, a nor’easter is a large cyclone usually accompanied by heavy rain or snow that can cause hurricane-force winds, blizzard conditions, and coastal flooding. To us folks in Buffalo, we also call this “Tuesday.”
It’s “budget season!” On January 16th, Governor Cuomo released the FY 2019 Executive Budget, which is available here, and one day later the Department of Taxation and Finance issued a preliminary report on consequences of the Federal Tax reform and possible legislative responses, which can be found here. We blogged about some of this last month. Then, just last week, in his “30-day amendments” to the FY 2019 Executive Budget, we got to see more of the Governor’s proposals take shape. Now the dust has somewhat settled on all these proposals, so let’s take a look. The highlights of the proposed amendments, which include a new optional Employer Compensation Expense Tax system, increasing the options for charitable deductions, and provisions designed to decouple the state tax code from the federal tax code, are summarized below.