State Corporate Income Taxes

If a corporation headquartered in say, NY, (or whatever other state) has offices in all 50 states, does the company pay state income taxes on their profits to all 50 states or just to the state where it is headquartered?

 

While not all 50 US States have corporate income taxes - the corporation, if it had a physical office in each of the 50 States, YES, that would likely be enough nexus in each State individually to make it liable for any applicable income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and so on.

There could be an a few States where this would not be enough nexus, but for most of them it would be.

 

So except for the few states that exempt corporate income, I assume the company is required to file a tax return in each state; if so, it sounds like a paperwork nightmare.

 

How would a company figure out how much it owes to each state? Do they just allocate the profit that they earned in each state and pay the tax accordingly?

 

Each State has its own rules for allocation. These are usually based on a weighted formula using the amount of compensation paid, the amount of sales revenue, and the amount of hard assets in use (owned or rented) such as offices and equipment.

For any business big enough to maintain 50 or more offices, they can certainly handle the accounting functions that go with it. It's just a cost of doing business, nothing unusual.

 

If a U.S. based company sells a product or service to say, 100 different countries, do they pay taxes on their profits entirely to the U.S. or to 100 different countries?

Also, if a U.S. based company has an office in India, would they pay taxes on their profits to the U.S., as well as India, or just to the U.S.?

 

What if a company only employs independent contractors, not employees, in all 50 states; would the company then be exempt from owing state income taxes to all the states and only pay to the state where the company is based out of?

 

Why in the world are you asking a forum of (mostly) clueless posters??

Try a CPA

 

because there are CPAs on this forum. I can count three from casual conversations with others.

 

Let's take this out of the hypothetical. Are you talking about trading through an LLC or S corp.? which are both pass thru entities to you? And yes, from my readings, TraderStatus knows what he/she is saying.