Nine West’s Ohio Court Loss Is Boon for Taxpayers, With Caveats

Nine West’s failure Wednesday to convince the Ohio Supreme Court that the company shouldn’t be taxed for goods that passed through the state is both a win and a loss for corporate taxpayers, practitioners say.

Paul Melniczak of Reed Smith LLP, who represented the shoe retailer, said the ruling is unfortunate for his client. “But it’s actually pretty good for taxpayers as a whole” because it “strongly rejected” the Ohio Department of Taxation’s practice of requiring companies to have contemporaneous knowledge of where goods shipped through distribution centers ultimately were headed.

Before this decision, the department would say, “you have ...