The FY 2015 District of Columbia Budget Request Act (BRA, Bill 20-749) is currently being reviewed by the D.C. Council after being introduced on April 3 at the request of Mayor Vincent Gray. This year’s Budget Support Act (BSA, Bill 20-750), the supplementary bill implementing changes based on the BRA, contains several significant modifications to the tax provisions of the D.C. Code. The changes include provisions recently recommended by the D.C. Tax Revision Commission (TRC), an independent body created by the Council to evaluate possible changes to tax policy in the District with a focus on broadening the tax base and providing “fairness in tax apportionment.” In particular, the BSA proposes to adopt a single sales factor formula for the apportionment of business income and to reduce business income tax rates (both corporate and unincorporated) from nearly 10 to 9.4 percent. Two additional amendments are pulled directly from the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) rewrite of the Uniform Division of Income for Tax Purposes Act (UDITPA), including a change to the District’s definition of “sale” and the elimination of cost-of-performance sourcing.

Under the District’s existing apportionment statute, all businesses must apportion business income using a four factor formula consisting of property, payroll and double weighted sales factors. If the BSA is enacted, the statute would be amended to also apportion all business income using a single sales factor. While it is clear that the intent of the BSA provision is to adopt a single sales factor in D.C. going forward, a major ambiguity exists in drafting that would require apportionment using both a single sales and double weighted sales factor formula for taxable years starting after December 31, 2014—which of course is impossible. Thus, without a legislative amendments by the D.C. Council prior to passage on May 28, it is unclear whether the single sales factor formula will be optional or mandatory (as recommended by the TRC) for FY 2015. The budget projection released by Mayor Gray in conjunction with the legislation suggests that the single sales factor would be mandatory, since it is projected that this change would raise an additional $20 million in tax revenue for the District for FY 2015. If the single sales factor were optional, it is unlikely the provision would raise that much revenue.

In addition to statutory modifications to the apportionment formula, the BSA also would reduce the tax rate imposed on corporate and unincorporated businesses from 9.975 percent to 9.4 percent.  This is still higher than Maryland (8.25 percent) and Virginia (6 percent).

Picking up where the MTC left off with its ongoing UDITPA rewrite, the District would adopt the MTC draft definition of “sale” to explicitly exclude receipts from hedging transactions and other investment related activity (including the sale, exchange or other disposition of cash or securities).

In addition, BSA would adopt market-based sourcing for sales of intangibles and services, using the language of the MTC draft to do so.  The BSA does not pick up the remaining provisions of the MTC [...]

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