In 2014 New York state enacted comprehensive tax reform legislation, making significant revisions to Article 9-A (franchise tax on business corporations) of the New York Tax Law (the tax law), among others. These revisions are generally described in a Technical Services Bureau Memorandum, TSB-M-15(1)l, (Feb. 12, 2015). While the majority of those revised provisions took effect on Jan. 1, 2015, the state has been working ever since to update its regulations to reflect the statutory reforms. The state’s efforts are summarized on the Department of Taxation and Finance’s (the department) website, which provides draft copies as well as a spreadsheet showing the status of updated regulations on a variety of topics covered by Article 9-A, all of which show “final” updates posted between April and August 2022, which we take to mean that the draft regulations will enter the pipeline for finalization sooner rather than later.

While most of the updated regulations correspond to New York’s own corporate tax reforms, others take the opportunity to address recent court decisions and similar impetuses for change. One such revision, whose coverage may have been overshadowed by the bigger ticket reform items, is to New York’s regulations regarding the applicability of Public Law 86-272 (15 U.S.C. Sections 381-384) (the proposed regulations).