Mayer & Schweitzer, Inc. v. Director, Division of Taxation

20 N.J. Tax 217
CourtNew Jersey Tax Court
DecidedSeptember 18, 2002
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 20 N.J. Tax 217 (Mayer & Schweitzer, Inc. v. Director, Division of Taxation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Jersey Tax Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mayer & Schweitzer, Inc. v. Director, Division of Taxation, 20 N.J. Tax 217 (N.J. Super. Ct. 2002).

Opinion

SMALL, P.J.T.C.

This is a case under the New Jersey Corporation Business Tax (the “CBT”) (N.J.S.A. 54:10A-1 to -40) which requires me to determine whether, within the meaning of N.J.S.A. 54:10A-6(B)(6), certain business receipts of the plaintiff are earned in New Jersey or elsewhere. More specifically, I must decide whether securities bought and sold by the plaintiff, a New Jersey domiciled company, are “integrated with a business carried on in another state” within the meaning of N.J.A.C. 18:7-8.12, in order to determine whether those receipts are “earned” at the location of the trader employed by the plaintiff or at the location of plaintiffs customers.

I.

On June 25, 2002, I rendered an opinion in this matter denying the parties’ motions for judgment on the pleadings. After discussing the law and facts, I determined that the factual record needed to be supplemented so that I could determine: whether, plaintiff conducted a business in other states, and if it did (1) the nature of its business in the other states, and (2) whether the securities traded by plaintiff were integrated with its business conducted in other states.

The parties engaged in discovery after that ruling and have adopted the plaintiffs answers to those interrogatories as the facts [219]*219in this case. Thus both parties agree that there are no material facts in dispute. See Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 142 N.J. 520, 666 A.2d 146 (1995). Both parties have moved for summary judgment.

This opinion incorporates the findings and analysis found in my June 25, 2001 opinion as supplemented by the additional facts and arguments submitted since that date. I conclude that plaintiff correctly allocated its receipts to the location of its customers and not to the location of its traders.

II.

Plaintiff, Mayer & Schweitzer, Inc. (M & S), is a New Jersey Corporation. M & S is a “market-maker” in the over-the-counter securities market. A market-maker purchases and sells securities using its own capital, maintains an inventory of those securities, and then attempts to sell or purchase those securities for a profit. During the tax years in issue, 1992 through 1995, M & S maintained two offices in Jersey City, and additional offices in Florida, Illinois, and Colorado. M & S also owned a data processing facility in Arizona, which was leased to a related company. During the years 1992 to 1995, the Arizona facility did not perform any services for M & S.

The President and Vice President of M & S were resident in the New Jersey office. The Florida and Illinois offices both housed traders and sales and correspondent service personnel. The Colorado office housed only sales and correspondent service personnel. The New Jersey offices, both located in Jersey City, housed traders and sales personnel, as well as M & S’s administration, operations, systems, and compliance personnel. All of M & S’s personnel at the New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, and Colorado locations were M & S employees, with the exception of occasional office temps or consultants.

The vast majority of M & S’s customers were not the end-purchasers of the securities purchased and sold by M & S. M & S’s customers were other broker dealers and institutional customers who needed securities they did not have in inventory in order [220]*220to carry out transactions (purchases or sales) for their own customers. The balance of the customers were other market-makers.

The sales personnel housed in the New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, and Colorado offices were primarily responsible for developing new business for M & S, and also maintaining accounts they brought in. They performed them employment duties by phone and by attending Securities Traders Association conventions throughout the United States on a regular basis. The correspondent service personnel housed in the New Jersey, Florida, Illinois, and Colorado offices were basically responsible for maintaining house accounts. House accounts are customers who came to M & S unsolicited or through non-sales personnel. Generally, no trading or solicitation of new business was done by these correspondent service personnel.

M & S’s income was not derived from commissions, like a retail securities broker. The source of M & S’s income was the trading profit (the difference between the prices paid by M & S to acquire securities and the price charged to those purchasing the securities from M & S) on securities it risked its own capital to acquire.

The M'& S traders located in the New Jersey, Florida, and Illinois offices dealt with customers throughout the United States. During the years in question, M & S was registered or licensed in twenty-two states (including New Jersey) in which it traded its securities. These were not the only states in which M & S conducted trading activity. Some states did not require a market-maker like M & S to register or be licensed in order to conduct its business.

M & S’s trading room managers (located in New Jersey, Florida, and Illinois) determined for which securities the firm would act as a market-maker based on a variety of factors. All of these decisions were made internally. The total number of securities for which M & S acted as a market-maker at any given time was extensive. However, the majority of securities were purchased and sold out of the New Jersey offices. The record indicates that 2814(75%) issues were traded out of the New Jersey [221]*221office, 777(21%) were traded out of the Florida office, and 149(4%) were traded out of the Illinois office. The particular office location out of which the trading of a particular security was handled was determined by the trading manager’s selection of who the trader or traders would be.

Traders generally conducted trades electronically from the location (New Jersey, Florida, or Illinois) at which they were physically located, in the following manner, regardless of whether the transactions were sell orders or purchase orders:

1. The securities owed by M & S for its own account were held at the Depository Trust Company (DTC) in New York City, which acted as a central clearing repository.
2. The securities were registered in a nominee or “street name.”
3. M & S traders received orders from prospective purchasers throughout the United States by telephone or via electronic order routing and execution systems such as SOES (a small order execution system implemented in the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crash) and SelectNet (an order routing and negotiating system between NASDAQ member firms), both of which are NASDAQ-related electronic systems.
4. While the size of the order and market conditions determined the exact method of execution, orders received electronically would generally be executed electronically.
5. As the trade was electronically executed by the trader sitting at his or her terminal in New Jersey, Florida, or Illinois, the DTC in New York -would electronically transfer the stock out of M & S’s account, into the accounts of M & S’s customers, who were located throughout the country.
6.

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Bluebook (online)
20 N.J. Tax 217, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mayer-schweitzer-inc-v-director-division-of-taxation-njtaxct-2002.