An Indiana case dealing with out-of-state tax issues will come before the Indiana Supreme Court after the justices unanimously granted review to a dispute between the Indiana Department of State Revenue and a Hoosier RV dealer.
This story originally appeared on TheIndianaLawyer.com.
In an August opinion in Richardson’s RV Inc. v. Department of State Revenue, 18S-TA-22, Indiana Tax Court Judge Martha Blood Wentworth granted summary judgment to Middlebury-based Richardson’s RV on its challenge to the Department of Revenue’s proposed assessments. The RV dealer sold to in-state and out-of-state customers, but gave out-of-state customers the option to pay Indiana’s sales tax or their home state’s sales tax.
If a customer chose to pay the sales tax for their home state, Richardson’s transferred the RVs to the customer at a location in Michigan, a state that does not have a reciprocal agreement with Indiana. Wentworth upheld that practice in August, finding “the sales at issue were made and title passed upon physical delivery in Michigan.”
In a related opinion, Wentworth declined to strike the deposition of Kyle Richardson, who began working for the RV dealer in 2013 but testified from personal knowledge of the dealer’s business practices in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 tax years.
However, the judge did strike written statements from three of Richardson’s customers that were not attested to under the penalties of perjury, as well as the affidavit of a tax audit supervisor.
