The Adviser's Guide to Multistate Income Taxation: Compliance and Planning Opportunities

With rapid technological changes in e-commerce, more and more small businesses find themselves doing business in a multistate environment. The rise of internet sales has impacted the age-old nexus debate in unprecedented ways.

To keep up with your clients’ growing businesses—whatever their size—you need to be up to speed on multistate tax issues. This guide will help you maximize your client’s tax-saving opportunities.

Tight state budgets and dwindling tax revenues continue to force state tax administrators to press for authority to tax any out-of-state business that conducts even online sales in their state. In some states, simple participation in a trade show by an out-of-state business will create a filing obligation with the state. A simple misstep by the smallest of mom-and-pop businesses can result in thousands of dollars of tax, penalties, and interest.

States have become very aggressive with respect to nexus. Thus, unless you simply want to file in every state, you need to know what the parameters are.

Topics covered in the guide include:

• Nexus
• State modifications
• State filing methods
• Filing status
• Consolidated filing
• Combined reporting
• Apportionment and allocation
• Apportionment factors
• Uniform Division of Income for Tax Purposes Act (UDITPA)
• Throwback rules
• Business and nonbusiness income
• Intangibles: interest, dividends, and royalties
• Intangible holding companies (Delaware holding companies)
• Irregular corporate tax structures

The guide will analyze these concepts so that potential liabilities and tax savings are identified, to assist you and your clients in reducing costs and generating revenues in the multistate marketplace. As an adviser, you can make your services invaluable by helping your business clients use the lack of uniformity among the states to their benefit.

The included CD-ROM features an informative 124-slide PowerPoint presentation that you can use to educate your clients—and potential clients—on multistate tax issues. The presentation will help you illustrate situations that raise potential tax issues, and will review the rules and regulations that present the tax-saving opportunities available to them!

About the Author

Bruce M. Nelson, MA, CPA, has over 25 years’ experience in state and local tax and is currently employed at Ehrhardt Keefe Steiner Hottman, P.C. (EKS&H) in Colorado. Prior to joining EKS&H, Bruce was with a law firm specializing in state tax audit defense and litigation, was manager of tax policy for the State of Colorado, and was a senior tax manager in a Big Four accounting firm. Bruce earned his BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MA from Colorado State University. He is on the adjunct faculty of Regis University and is a frequent seminar speaker. He teaches continuing education classes in state and local tax for the University of Denver’s Graduate Tax Program, the Colorado Society of CPAs, and the AICPA. Bruce has published more than 40 tax articles in various publications, is a coauthor of the Sales and Use Tax Answer Book, and is a former columnist for the Journal of State Taxation. Bruce is a member of the AICPA and the Colorado Society of Certified Public Accountants.