Joseph Bright and Heidi Schwartz, members of Cozen O’Connor’s Tax Practice, discuss a case which found that all nuts, bolts, and washers used to install a guardrail system on a road or highway for Pennsylvania were exempt from sales tax in Bloomberg BNA. A construction contractor did not initially pay sales tax for those items, but was later assessed and taxed; guardrails are exempt from sales tax, as they are considered building machinery and equipment for a governmental entity, with the exclusion of guardrail posts. “The court reasoned that the exclusion of guardrail posts implied that all other items used in constructing a guardrail were exempt, including the nuts, bolts, washers, and guardrail blocks,” Joseph and Heidi explain. After reexamining the definition of “guardrails” and “guardrail systems,” the court concluded that all components of the guardrails, except the posts, were exempt.
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