The Ohio Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on four Ohio commercial activity tax cases, including the appeal of an Ohio Board of Tax Appeals decision affirming a substantial CAT assessment against a multi-state healthcare business. This case marks the first of four upcoming cases before the court that taxpayers and professionals hope will clarify application of the CAT. This case highlights the ongoing complexities and disputes surrounding the sourcing of taxable gross receipts to Ohio under the CAT, a tax originally designed to be easy for businesses to administer.

Kelvin Lawrence, a tax practitioner in the Firm's Columbus office, commented on the significance of these cases to Bloomberg Tax. An excerpt is below:

The CAT was envisioned as a “broad-based, low-rate tax that would be able to fund the state, be easy to administer, and be minimally impactful on the business community,” tax practitioner Kelvin Lawrence of Dinsmore & Shohl LLP in Columbus said. That so many CAT cases are making it up to the high court level“ shows that there are serious issues that taxpayers need to have resolved in the CAT, even 20 years on,” he said.

Read the full article here.