Tax News

CCH (cch.taxgroup.com) reports:

  Participants continued the debate whether and how to revise the Uniform Division of Income for Tax Purposes Act (UDITPA) at the second meeting of the committee assigned to examine the issues by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC). The meeting, which took place March 28, 2009, in Chicago, consisted largely of a reprise of the debate that occurred at the committee's first meeting in May 2008. (TAXDAY, 2008/06/03, S.2) However, in a surprise development, the committee's chair, Charles Trost of the law firm of Waller Lansden, announced at the commencement that he was resigning from the committee because of a conflict that had come to his attention. Dale Higer, a commissioner from Idaho, chaired the meeting in Trost's place.

  The ULC, which formerly was known as the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), is an association of commissions on uniform laws from each state. It created UDITPA as one of its uniform laws in 1957. Recently, at the urging of the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC), the ULC appointed a drafting committee to revise the Act. After objections were raised to the ULC undertaking this project by taxpayer representatives and some state legislators, the ULC took a step back and reformed the drafting committee as a study committee. However, this action did not satisfy the project's opponents, who repeated their objections to its continuation throughout the Chicago meeting.

  At the conclusion of the meeting, Higer said that the committee will reconvene in a conference call, which will be open to the public, in four to six weeks. Afterwards, he said, the study committee will make a recommendation regarding how, or if, to proceed to the ULC's Scope and Program Committee, which will meet in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first week in July. The ULC's Executive Committee also will be meeting in Santa Fe at that time. The ultimate decision, Higer said, could be to have the committee continue as originally planned, end the committee's efforts, or have it go forward with a changed scope.

  The chair of the ULC's Executive Committee, Prof. Robert Stein of the University of Minnesota Law School, said that the ULC may also choose to proceed with a model act, rather than a uniform act. While the commissioners are obliged to work for adoption of a uniform act in every state, he said, states are encouraged to select from the sections of a model act those that fit them and there is no obligation to work for uniform adoption in all states.