[rjamestaylor]

Slow down, people...

Here's part of an update from the Texas Taxpayers Research Association applicable to this matter:

"... This past week TTARA had extensive discussions with the Comptroller’s office concerning the original intent and interpretation of the new language. The Comptroller’s Office has acknowledged that the purpose of the proposed rule was indeed broader than what was stated in the preamble, but not so broad as to extend nexus to anyone using a server in Texas.

In order to properly clarify the intent of the rules change and more clearly state agency policy, the Comptroller’s Office will issue a new rule proposal. William Hamner, Director of Tax Administration indicated that the agency’s intent is not to extend nexus to a person simply using a third-party server in Texas for an activity such as webhosting. ..."

Move along...nothing to see here

[kjuhygtfrde]

Presumably this was beaten into the comptrollers office with a cluebat over the sound of uhaul trucks emptying all the data centers that had been built in Texas

[pyre]

Sounds like this is meant to apply to people running their own datacenters/servers. (e.g. if amazon.com ran a datacenter in Texas that was serving up their website, this would apply to them; but if amazon was buying hosting in Texas from a 3rd party, this would not apply to them)

[alecco]

Interesting, but [citation needed].

[rjamestaylor]

It's from a letter from the TTARA -- it's currently behind a paywall (hence the reason for only excerpting it) but should be public very soon. [Edit: website - http://www.ttara.org/ ]

[alecco]

But even that is a private organization not representing the state of Texas. It would be nice to see an official statement and not 2nd hand unwritten statement on something so important.

[rjamestaylor]

Agreed -- however, the quote from the Director of Tax Administration is interesting as it specifically address the intent (or NON-intent) for these changes to apply to webhosting.