MA Says 80 New Auditors Will Bring In $60Million

I saw this headline and it piqued my interest. I wondered how this would be. That would mean each auditor would find over $700,000 in assessments each year. That seems a little overstated. Further reading of the article in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette revealed that the estimates are pretty loose indeed.

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Newspaper Calls Wal-Mart State Tax Planning "Corporate Tax Shenanigans"

I find it interesting how the newpapers and other media report about corporate tax matters. Sometimes it's quite the eye-opener. Take this editorial article in the Carrboro (NC) Citizen which is written by Elaine Mejia who is referred to as the director of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center. In this article she describes a tax planning technique (which I'm sure was done for other than tax-reduction purposes) that was used by Wal-Mart that had the effect of dramatically reducing state income taxes in NC. NC is a separate return state. Following is her description of what Wal-Mart did and take note of the inflammatory adjectives she throws in there. She makes a call for combined reporting -- the bain of state income tax consultants.

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ALABAMA Income Tax Law Survives Challenge

The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals on Friday overturned a lower court decision in a corporate tax case that might have resulted in a a multimillion-dollar revenue loss to the state. The vote wasn't close. The 5-0 order by the appeals court reversed Circuit Judge Tracy McCooey of Montgomery, who had ruled that VFJ Ventures' (Vanity Fair) deductions were not unreasonable as that term was defined in the law. What was the definition of "unreasonable" in the law. That was the key to the lower court's ruling -- it was not defined.

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