SALT Blog - SALT Blawg

On February 28, 2023, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued its evenly divided opinions in GM Berkshire Hills LLC v. Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals, 16 MAP 2022 (“Berkshire”).  In Berkshire, the Wilson School District (“WSD” or “school district”) adopted a policy of appealing recently sold properties that were potentially underassessed by at least $150,000. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted cert, agreeing to review two issues:

• whether the school district’s selective real estate tax assessment appeals violate the uniformity clause when the ...

The SALT deduction cap, enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2017, is a quagmire for Democrats.  They’ve made promises to repeal it, and have made a wedge issue out of it.  But repealing the cap would be regressive (it would benefit higher-income earners), which contradicts the party’s broader platform. 

Aside from repeal, leaders in the kill-the-cap campaign have sought to undo the SALT deduction cap by challenging its constitutionality in court and by enacting State statutes that seek to end-run the cap (known as “workaround statutes”).  But challenges to the ...

Since 2017 when the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act was enacted and placed a hard cap on state and local tax deductions, critics of the cap have campaigned to reverse it.  These critics (as well as the cap’s proponents) hail from every walk of life and political stripe.  But the mantel against the cap has been taken on most prominently by the Democratic Party and a handful of high-tax States that in recent election cycles have tended to vote Democrats into office, often labeled “Blue States.”  The efforts to overturn the cap have been three-fold: (1) state workaround statutes that seek to end-run the ...

The City of Philadelphia Department of Revenue issued Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”) regarding its Wage Tax policies in light of COVID-19.  Philadelphia applies the “requirement of employment” test in order to determine whether a non-resident’s base of operations is the employer’s Philadelphia location. If a Philadelphia employer requires a non-resident employee to perform duties outside of Philadelphia (including working from home), that employee is exempt from the Wage Tax for those days spent fulfilling that requirement.  However, if a non-resident ...

Pennsylvania

Earlier this year, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue issued temporary guidance regarding telework during COVID-19 and the related tax implications thereof.  The Department has now issued an end date to its temporary policies: guidance issued by the Department is in effect until the earlier of June 30, 2021 or 90 days after the Proclamation of Disaster Emergency in Pennsylvania is lifted.

Ordinarily, the presence of employees working temporarily from home within Pennsylvania is sufficient to establish nexus for out-of-state businesses for purposes of the ...

During July, the Commonwealth Court handed down its decision in Synthes v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 108 FR 2016, which was a closely watched case dealing with differing interpretations of Pennsylvania’s costs of performance (“COP”) statute.  Prior to 2014, the statute required services to be sourced to the location of the “income-producing activity.”  Where the income-producing activity occurred both within and without Pennsylvania, receipts were required to be sourced to the state where the greater proportion of income-producing activities occurred, based ...

On June 12, 2017, The Honorable James Sensenbrenner (R. WI 5^th District) introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives a bill, designated H.R. 2887, which would codify the nexus standard set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992).

The bill is set against the backdrop of multiple recent attempts by the states to persuade the Supreme Court to take a case that would revisit and overturn Quill.  Quill held that the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state (or local taxing authority) from imposing upon a retailer an ...

Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s SALT Practice Chair, Stewart Weintraub, recently wrote an article about Philadelphia RAR Overpayments for the Journal of Multistate Taxation and Incentives.

His article, “Philadelphia RAR Overpayments – Not for the Faint of Heart,” discusses a recent Philadelphia case in which a statute of limitations barring a refund did not prohibit credits against future taxes.

Stewart outlined the Philadelphia Business Income and Receipts Tax (BIRT) structure, the facts of the case, the statute of limitations issues and the case’s conclusion. The ...