Challenging California's Underground Regulations: Exploring the ACMA's Advocacy Efforts with Paul Miller (Part 2)

SALTovation: Making Sense of State and Local Tax

Mar 27 2024 • 22 mins

This week we continue our discussion with Paul Miller, Vice President & Deputy Director of the ACMA, and David Swetnam-Burland, Partner at Brann & Isaacson. As remote sellers navigate the new state tax laws and consumer privacy regulations, the need for federal legislation to provide clarity and consistency for businesses operating across multiple states has increased. Listen as we discuss the impact of local home rule cities, such as in Colorado, on compliance efforts and how the ACMA advocates for federal solutions to protect their members and promote industry growth.

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • The MTC's updated interpretation attempts to align tax laws with the digital era, impacting businesses that operate online.
  • The definition and application of 86-272 is a central point of contention, with states leveraging different interpretations to expand their tax bases.
  • Legal challenges, especially in California and New York, are proving pivotal in establishing how nexus laws apply and are enforced.
  • Local compliance, notably in Colorado's home rule cities, adds complexity to the remote sellers' tax obligations and merits close legal attention.

Quotables

  • “From the ACMA's perspective, our approach, as I mentioned earlier, is always to try to get a federal bill passed into law, because organizations like ours, we're very small comparison to, say, the milk industry or something. We're serving a pretty specific constituent, and they are located throughout the states and they're being chased by different states, and we don't have the means to chase after those states to defend them.” -Paul Miller [17:51]
  • “It is one thing for the Supreme Court to say we created a rule in 1992, now we're in 2018. We don't like our rule as much as we did then, or the composition of our court has changed sufficiently so that we no longer have five votes in favor of that rule.” -David Swetnum-Burland [03:50]

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