Corporate Tax | State Apportionment
One set of profits. Several states that each want a share.
States divide your income between them using factors built from sales, payroll and property, and they do not all use the same formula or weight it the same way. The factors are computed from the same invoices, payroll and asset records the rest of the business runs on, so the numbers behind an apportionment are traceable rather than assembled once a year from memory.
What the system does
Capability, input, output.
| Capability | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Sales factor | Invoices with their sourcing | Receipts by state, from the same sourcing the sales tax side uses |
| Payroll factor | Payroll by work location | Compensation by state, from the payroll you already ran |
| Property factor | Owned and leased locations | Property by state, from the asset and lease records |
| Per-state formula | The formula you or your advisor configure | The apportionment percentage per state, computed rather than typed |
| Throwback treatment | Sales into states you do not file in | Flagged for a decision, since states differ on whether these come back |
| Drill-through | Any factor | The invoices, employees or assets behind it |
| Year comparison | Prior-year factors | What moved and why, which is the first question on review |
-
Sales factor
- Input
- Invoices with their sourcing
- Output
- Receipts by state, from the same sourcing the sales tax side uses
-
Payroll factor
- Input
- Payroll by work location
- Output
- Compensation by state, from the payroll you already ran
-
Property factor
- Input
- Owned and leased locations
- Output
- Property by state, from the asset and lease records
-
Per-state formula
- Input
- The formula you or your advisor configure
- Output
- The apportionment percentage per state, computed rather than typed
-
Throwback treatment
- Input
- Sales into states you do not file in
- Output
- Flagged for a decision, since states differ on whether these come back
-
Drill-through
- Input
- Any factor
- Output
- The invoices, employees or assets behind it
-
Year comparison
- Input
- Prior-year factors
- Output
- What moved and why, which is the first question on review
State Apportionment FAQ
What buyers ask.
Do you know each state’s formula?
The formula is configured per state by you or your advisor, and we deliberately do not ship one as product copy. States weight the factors differently, several have moved to sales-only, and some have changed more than once. What the system owns is computing whatever formula you set from real source data, and showing the workings.
Where do the numbers come from?
The same records the business already runs on: invoices for sales, payroll for compensation, the asset and lease register for property. The value is less in the arithmetic than in the sourcing, since the usual method is an annual extract that nobody can reconcile back to anything.
What is throwback and why is it flagged?
Where you sell into a state you do not file in, some states pull that sale back into the origin state’s factor. Whether it applies depends on both states and on your filing position, so those sales are surfaced for a decision rather than assigned silently.
Our sales sourcing is already done for sales tax. Is it reused?
Yes, and that is the point of it living on the same record. Sales tax sourcing and income tax sourcing are not identical questions and can diverge, but they start from the same invoice and the same destination, so doing it twice from two extracts is how they disagree.
We only file in one state. Do we need this?
Probably not yet, and we would rather say so. It earns its place when you have employees, property or meaningful sales in more than one state, which usually arrives before anyone notices.
See your apportionment factors from real source data.
Connect your books, free. Sales, payroll and property resolve by state, and every factor drills to what produced it.