John M. Paz v. Director, New Jersey Division of Taxation

In Mobil Oil Corp v. Commissioner of Taxation of Vermont, 445 U.S. 425, 444 (1980), this Court stated that, for State income tax purposes, taxation by allocation and taxation by apportionment are “theoretically incommensurate.” The questions presented are:

1. Whether it is constitutionally permissible for the domiciliary State of a corporation engaged in a multistate unitary business to allocate to itself for taxation purposes the entire gain realized by the corporation on the sale of all the assets of the unitary business, given the fact that the corporation apportioned the gain among over 20 States where the business was conducted, in accordance with this Court’s decisions in Mobil Oil Corp., supra; Container Corp. of America v. Franchise Tax Board, 463 U.S. 159, 169 (1983); Allied-Signal, Inc. v. Director, Division of Taxation, 504 U.S. 768 (1992), and MeadWestvaco Corp. v. Illinois Department of Revenue, 553 U.S. 16 (2008).

2. Whether a nonresident individual taxpayer, as the sole shareholder of an S corporation conducting a multistate unitary business, may be personally taxed by the corporation’s domiciliary State on 100% of the gain realized on the sale of all the assets of the business, even though the same gain was taxed on an apportioned basis by the other States where the business was conducted and only 25% of the gain was apportioned to the domiciliary State. (i)