Weekly Round-Up: Crowell's Conversations – Missouri Does Not Expect to Be Faced With “Gillete”-type Challenge

The challenge in Gillette relates more to states that do not provide the taxpayer the option to elect the Compact's three-factor apportionment formula or which have insisted that a taxpayer take a particular position,John Mollenkamp, Acting Director of Revenue for the State of Missouri, explained in response to questions about whether he was following the Multistate Tax Compact litigation. On the contrary, Missouri statutes give the option to the taxpayer; you always get the Compact options, he said.

Mollenkamp’scomments were part of a larger interview in this week's issue of the Bloomberg BNA Weekly State Tax Report in which he spoke to Walt Nagel, Don Griswold, and Jeremy Abrams, all with Crowell and Moring's state tax team about, among other things, why Missouri is a great place to do business, the Revenue Integrated Project and the power to rule on constitutional challenges. The interview is part of Bloomberg BNA’s Crowell's Conversations series in which members of Crowell & Moring's state tax team meet regularly with state tax commissioners and their counsel to bring Bloomberg BNA's readers candid and timely observations from the country's top state tax decision-makers.

You've got the new single sales factor option that just became law last summer, he said. But there is still an election to use the apportionment rules of the Multistate Tax Compact. We're never going into a case saying, “You should have done this other method of apportionment from our statute,” because they're all set out as clearly optional at the election of the taxpayer,Mollenkamp explained.

So I don't see Missouri having a Gillette-type challenge unless the legislature were to do something, taking away the election or giving the Department some power to insist on a particular method of apportionment. That has not happened, nor do I know of anyone asking for that,Mollenkamp said.

The complete interview withMollenkamp can be read here .

Continue the discussion on Bloomberg BNA’s State Tax group on LinkedIn :   The Tax Foundation rated Missouri 16th for all tax types and 7th for corporate income tax. Why do you think that Missouri is such a good tax jurisdiction?

For more information about this and other state tax issues, sign up for a free trial of the Bloomberg BNA Premier State Tax Library. 

In other developments…

Tennessee – 2014 Legislative Highlights , by Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP

Massachusetts – Nexus creating transactions disregarded as sham transactions , by PwC

Pennsylvania House of Representatives Passes Suspension of Tax Credits , by the Tax Foundation

Compiled by Priya D. Nair

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