State and Local Tax

What EY can do for you

We identify risk areas and sustainable planning opportunities for state and local taxes throughout the tax lifecycle, helping you to address your state and local tax responsibilities and achieve your business goals in the US and around the world.

Our US State and Local Tax group is effectively integrated with our Global Indirect Tax team to give you the perspective and support you need to manage your global tax burden effectively.

Our network of practitioners has in-depth knowledge of both direct and indirect state and local taxes and offers a broad array of services, including:

Business Incentives and Credits

Business incentives and tax credits can be generated from investment in people, property and training. These credits can dramatically affect a company’s tax position. Incentives often include income or franchise tax credits, sales and use tax exemptions and refunds, property tax abatements, reimbursements for training expenses and favorable financing arrangements.

Our network of both US and global incentives professionals can help companies identify and obtain incentives that may be available through legislative statutes or through negotiation with appropriate federal, state and local agencies.

We provide services in a number of areas that assist companies in identifying and obtaining business incentives and tax credits:

• Business incentives advisory
• Multistate statutory credits and refunds
• Global incentives advisor
• Employer credits and incentives
• Training incentives
• Climate change and sustainability-related credits and incentives

Employment Tax

As employment tax costs continue to rise, businesses are challenged to seek efficient management strategies. Whether the payroll and employment tax functions are handled internally or outsourced to a third party, there are any number of situations that require assistance from an experienced payroll and employment tax professional.

Our employment tax team helps companies evaluate their payroll and employment tax operations and practices, identifies employment tax cost savings opportunities aligned with the company’s systems and processes and helps companies implement change to match both long- and short-term objectives. In addition, our employment tax team also handles employment tax claims administration services.

State Income Tax

In the current environment, tax departments are increasingly resource constrained. Keeping up with the ever-changing state income tax laws is a demanding job. Our tax professionals recognize that limited resources may be keeping you from reaching your goals.

Our goal is to help identify ways to lower ETR, improve cash flow and reduce risk. Our state income tax professionals can:

• Review filing methodologies to identify potential refunds and risks.
• Answer questions throughout the tax accounting, compliance and controversy processes.
• Assist with the complicated process of identifying tax positions, assessing the associated risk and measuring the benefit.
• Provide guidance on new state tax policy and legislation, advise on the tax return impact of those changes and team to help prepare returns.
• Help companies manage the complex and time-consuming task of communicating with state and local tax authorities.
• Assist with state tax audits and mitigation of audit assessments.

We also have a state tax desk network that allows us to efficiently and effectively address questions. The network includes professionals with deep state-specific tax knowledge capable of addressing complex technical and administrative issues.

Property Tax

Property taxes are the largest controllable component of many companies’ state and local tax burden. Average property taxes comprise 37% of a company’s total state and local tax burden. Sometimes a company’s taxable assets in its business are so complex that the company pays more in taxes than is necessary.

Our property tax professionals offer tax advisory, compliance and outsourcing services related to both real and tangible personal property. More than 80 dedicated property tax professionals across the US are strategically positioned to provide companies with both local and industry-specific experience.

• We help companies address taxes that go directly to the bottom line
• Improve property tax reporting
• Verify asset records and classification
• Support appropriate property tax values on both personal property and real property filings
• Address critical issues by providing experienced national coverage
• Apply a uniform approach to the reporting and valuation of property tax accounts
• Evaluate property tax overhead costs

Sales and Use Tax

Our sales and use tax professionals have years of collective industry and government experience providing firsthand knowledge of the issues impacting your company. We help companies on a nationwide basis, across a broad spectrum of sales and use tax issues.

Our extended network of tax and accounting professionals help address the issues that may be affected by your sales and use tax decisions.

We offer:

• Sales and use tax advisory services
• Sales and use tax recovery services
• Sales and use tax structure review
• Risk assessment and mitigation
• Audit support and assessment mitigation
• Sales and use tax systems review and process improvement

Excise tax

Excise taxes operate at the crossroads of tight government funding, corporate transactions, increased audit pressure and compounded transactional taxation complexities. Our excise tax professionals assist our clients in navigating the current landscape of excise taxation through four primary services.

Our team’s integrated knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and experience with each excise tax project provides a dynamic approach to past issues, present solutions to transactional struggles and future guidance on avoiding excise tax pitfalls. Our services cover:

• Excise tax compliance: Dynamic co-sourced compliance consisting of the full spectrum of the excise tax return and refund life cycle, from data identification and gather to final submission.
• Refund realization: Our tax knowledge, operational history and refund experience can help companies analyze operational activities and identify refundable opportunities.
• Excise tax controversy: Leverage our experience in excise audit tax representation and effective management of data, issues and strategy during an excise tax audit with the IRS, TTB or a state revenue department.
• Excise tax consulting: With business technology evolution, operational and structural transactions transformation and employment lifecycle turnover, we can help companies reduce risk and effectively manage their excise tax burden.

Unclaimed Property and Escheat Services

Property that is unclaimed for a prescribed period of time reverts, or escheats, back to the state. This unclaimed property (UP) can either be tangible or intangible, and represents a liability rather than a tax. Examples could include disbursement checks, customer credits or sector-specific property like gift cards and dormant investment or bank accounts.

UP reporting is a statutory requirement imposed by all US jurisdictions that creates an annual, and sometimes historical, reporting responsibility for every organization regardless of industry, operations or size. The state’s role is to serve as custodian, helping ensure that the rights of the property owner are protected indefinitely.

Challenges arise from continuous legislative movement as well as increased audit activity as the states enforce compliance. It is recommended that businesses have a systemic and strategic process in place for addressing their UP responsibilities.

Our Unclaimed Property and Escheat Services (UPES) professionals have extensive technical and practical experience from years of working with clients, states and third party audit firms to meet all types of market demands. We offer services focused on cutting edge technology, data management and innovation for the following areas along the UP life cycle:

• Audit defense
• Self-reporting and exposure analysis
• Leading practices
• Annual Compliance
• Merger, acquisition or bankruptcy UP support