Tax News

Top Story

Sales Tax Update - June 2025

6/2/2025

Maryland Imposes New 3% Sales Tax on List of Software, IT and Data Services

On May 20, 2025 Governor Moore signed House Bill 352, enacting a 3% tax on a long list of software, data and IT services.  Recall that in 2021, Maryland expanded its sales tax to include digital products, which its defined broadly to include computer software regardless of method of delivery and certain business to business services. Excluded from taxable software requires configuration (i.e., does not operate immediately “out of the box”) and customized software.  In July 2022, Maryland effected additional sales tax legislation to exclude ...

read more

cloud

Where States Will Turn for Revenue in Response to Declining Sales Tax Collections?

Michael T Dillon, Dillon Tax Consulting LLC
5/27/2020

As I predicted in my March 25th post, Sales Tax Strategies During the Economic Disruption of the COVID-19 Outbreak, every state is revising its FY 2020 revenue forecasts in response to declining tax collections for March and April.  [https://www.ncsl.org/research/fiscal-policy/ coronavirus-covid-19-state-budget-updates-and-revenue-projections637208306.aspx ]  As reported by the National Conference for State Legislatures ...

read more

Sales Tax on Cloud-computing: Rulings Also Mean More Uncertainty and Unpredictability

Dillon Tax Consulting
12/13/2016

A number of sales tax decisions in Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois serve to remind us all of the uncertainty involving cloud computing transactions, and the importance to seek guidance from tax practitioners regarding your specific facts. While each taxpayers’ facts involved the access to and/or provision of cloud-based services, the transactions for each were ...

read more

Texas Court says the “Essence of Transaction” involving a Provider’s technology platform is not “Data Processing”

Dillon Tax Consulting
5/10/2016

In a decision involving the true object, or “essence of the transaction” test, the Texas court of appeals upheld the trial court’s decision in favor of the taxpayer refund claim for sales tax assessed on the provision of bill pay services. In Hegar v. CheckFree Services Corporation, NO. 14-15-00027-CV (Tex. Ct. App., April 19 ...

read more

Cloud-based Services: “The Wild West” and the Cavalry

Dillon Tax Consulting
11/8/2015

The New York Department of Taxation and Finance (Department) recently issued an Advisory Opinion providing their interpretation of yet another Taxpayer's provision of Software As a Service (SAaS). In TSB-A-15(36)S, Taxpayer sought an Advisory Opinion from the Office of Counsel for the Department, as to the application of New York sales tax ...

read more