I recently blogged about a Californian lawmaker’s startling proposal to impose sales tax on an illegal industry: the marijuana business. A week or so after I posted that piece, Tennessee’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s excise tax on illegal substances — the so-called “crack tax” — on the bizarre grounds that it was not imposed on “merchants,” but on possessors of the substances in question.

Confused? Me, too. more

Keeping up with developments in indirect taxation in the thousands of state and local jurisdictions in the U.S. is a towering task, no question, but companies that operate globally have it worse by an order of magnitude. The myriad laws governing the various sales taxes, value-added taxes, and excise duties around the world are mind-bendingly complex, and they’re in constant flux.

KPMG has been keeping a close eye on the global indirect tax scene in a series of consistently useful advisories. The firm’s midyear roundup takes a broad look at developments in over a dozen countries and throws in some discussion of technologies that are currently impacting the field. more

U.S. companies with large operations in the United Kingdom have a new layer of compliance complexity to deal with. With the enactment yesterday of the Finance Bill, the nation’s annual omnibus legislation for changes in the tax law, senior accounting officers of large U.K. corporate taxpayers are now required to certify that their accounting systems are adequate for the purposes of accurate tax reporting. And they face personal liability for any “careless or deliberate” failure.

Shades of Sarbanes-Oxley? For sure. more

The IRS is amping up its enforcement efforts in the international arena, as I noted here last month. In a report this week calling for a massive FY 2010 budget of close to $12.5 billion — $363 million more than the President has requested — the IRS Oversight Board expressed its support for the Administration’s plans to step up enforcement, “particularly in its approach to dealing more effectively with the increasing international tax activities of individual and business taxpayers.”

One aspect of the IRS’s new global focus that hasn’t received much attention — but should — is its potential impact on companies with employees assigned to overseas positions. If your organization’s payroll includes expatriates, this might be a good time to review your tax-related global mobility risks. more