Combs v. City of Webster

This suit involves the allocation of local sales tax revenue by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The Comptroller is responsible for collecting local sales tax from retailers, and then distributing the revenue to the appropriate local taxing jurisdictions. Appellees are numerous local taxing jurisdictions that had originally received allocations of local sales tax revenue attributable to certain furniture retailers’ sales, based on the locations of the retail stores in which the sales occurred. Beginning in 2006, the Comptroller notified appellees that a portion of that revenue would instead be allocated to another local taxing jurisdiction. This reallocation was based on the Comptroller’s determination that the sales were consummated for sales tax purposes in the city where the retailers’ warehouses are located. The Comptroller applied this determination both prospectively and retroactively to May 2002. The retroactive aspect of the Comptroller’s ruling requires the Comptroller to recoup tax revenues from appellees that have already been paid to them. Appellees filed suit against appellant Susan Combs, in her official capacity as Comptroller of Public Accounts for the State of Texas, asserting (1) claims under the Texas Constitution for violation of the due course of law and takings provisions, (2) claims under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act (UDJA) that the Comptroller had acted outside her authority in interpreting and applying the Texas Tax Code provisions that govern the location where a sale is consummated, and in applying a change in local sales tax allocation retroactively, and (3) a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that the Comptroller’s rule allowing retrospective reallocation of local sales tax was not properly promulgated. The Comptroller filed a plea to the jurisdiction as to all claims. The district court denied the plea, and the Comptroller appeals.

We affirm the district court’s denial of the plea to the jurisdiction as to appellees’ claim under the UDJA that the Comptroller acted outside her authority in applying the tax code regarding where the specific sales at issue were consummated. We reverse the district court’s order as to the remainder of appellees’ UDJA claims, their constitutional claims, and their APA claim, and dismiss those claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.