States are increasingly attempting to address the application of tax to emerging technology and business models through new law, court cases and administrative rulings. Tracking developments is critical not only for technology providers, but also for purchasers of technology—which includes everyone.
To make recent developments more accessible to our clients, KPMG's Washington National Tax –State and Local Tax practice has created a Technology Checklist (Techlist) that summarizes recent state guidance for topics such as the taxability of software, guidance on digital equivalents and much more. The Techlist will be published on a quarterly basis.
Highlights of the current issue include:
- Iowa: The Iowa Department of Revenue ruled that a taxpayer's remote storage service constituted a "storage service" taxable in Iowas effective January 1, 2019, but he taxpayer's IaaS product was not subject to tax.
- Tennessee: The Tennessee Department of Revenue determined that a product for website traffic data and analytics was not considered taxable software as a service.
- Alabama: The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals held that software purchased by the taxpayer was not exempt custom software when, after the purchase, the software provider performed a custom implementation and configuration for the taxpayer.
- Colorado: The Colorado Department of Revenue determined that sales tax did not apply to charges for maintenance and support services, as well as software and data updates, for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that the taxpayer's customers licensed from other vendors.
- Illinois: The Illinois Department of Revenue ruled that a taxpayers sales of utility tokens to fund a clean energy project via block-chain technology constituted the sale of nontaxable intangible property.
Many more developments are covered in the Techlist - download it below.
