Local privilege license taxes will be history as of July 1, 2015. I’ve blogged about their repeal here and here, but lots of interesting questions continue to fill my email inbox. Here are more Q&A’s about the disappearance of these taxes and the aftermath.
Posts Tagged ‘privilege license’
Even More Questions & Answers About the Elimination of Privilege License Taxes
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014The Final Four of Tax Questions
Thursday, April 11th, 2013With this week’s men’s and women’s championship games (neither of which featured my beloved Blue Devils, alas), the college basketball season came to a close. But don’t despair—you won’t need to wait a full year for another Final Four. After much number crunching and bracketology, I’ve identified the four most popular tax questions I get […]
NC Supreme Court Strikes Down Lumberton’s Tax on Video Sweepstakes
Thursday, March 14th, 2013Were I a gambler, I would not have bet on this result. No, I don’t mean Duke’s glorious trouncing of the Tar Heels on Saturday night. I mean last Friday’s surprising ruling from the North Carolina Supreme Court that Lumberton’s privilege license taxes on video sweepstakes were unconstitutionally high and therefore unenforceable. As a result, […]
What’s Next for Video Sweepstakes?
Thursday, January 17th, 2013It took more than two years, but the ban on video sweepstakes that was originally scheduled to take effect in December 2010 is finally enforceable. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on December 14, 2012, that the ban did not violate the sweepstakes operators’ free speech rights under the First Amendment. Appellate court rulings become […]
What Didn’t Happen
Thursday, July 19th, 2012For those of us who work with local taxes, the most important news out of the General Assembly this summer was what didn’t happen. The legislature did not create any major new property tax exemptions. The long-awaited overhaul of the registered motor vehicle property tax system was not postponed (again) beyond July 2013. The seemingly annual […]
Tax Day at the N.C. Court of Appeals (Part 1)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012[Update: In 2013 the Court of Appeals reversed its opinion in the Fayetteville case discussed below based on a related N.C. Supreme Court opinion. See this blog post for more details.] The N.C. Court of Appeals celebrated tax day a few weeks later than the rest of us: on Tuesday, the judges released two interesting decisions involving local […]
City Wins Round Two in Internet Sweepstakes Tax Case – But the Fight Continues
Friday, March 2nd, 2012[Update: In 2013 the N.C. Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals decision discussed below. See this blog post for more details.] In the first of three decisions we are expecting on internet sweepstakes, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the City of Lumberton and its authority to levy substantial privilege license […]
Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s . . .
Friday, January 20th, 2012Harry Potter and those Twilight vampires need to move over and make room for a new literary superhero. The mighty local government tax collector returns to the best seller lists this week after a fourteen-year absence with the release of my new book, Fundamentals of Property Tax Collection Law in North Carolina. That’s right, I […]
How Would an Internet Sweepstakes Ban Affect City Privilege License Taxes?
Thursday, June 24th, 2010[Update: The ban on internet sweepstakes became law when Gov. Perdue signed H.B. 80 on July 20. The ban was upheld by the N.C. Supreme Court in late 2012. See this blog post for more details. ] The General Assembly moved closer to banning internet sweepstakes on Monday when the Senate voted 47-1 in favor of H.B. […]
Internet Sweepstakes Tax Challenged in Federal Court
Thursday, April 29th, 2010Given the gaming industry’s aggressive litigation strategy against criminal sanctions, it seemed only a matter of time before internet sweepstakes operators responded similarly to the growing number of municipal privilege license taxes imposed on their businesses. That time has arrived. In late April lawyers for the “Mt. Airy Business Center” filed a complaint in federal court alleging that the city of Kannapolis violated […]
Internet Sweepstakes Tax Update
Friday, March 12th, 2010[Update: The N.C. Supreme Court issued important ruling on video sweepstakes in 2012 and 2013. See this post and this post for more details.] Internet sweepstakes operations have continued to mushroom across the state. A recent newspaper article identified eight stand-alone internet sweepstakes parlors in Durham alone. If true, then Durham now offers twice as many […]