The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued an advisory opinion, determining the taxability of two online services sold by a taxpayer relating to government requests for proposal: (1) the procurement service was nontaxable; but (2) the notification service was a taxable information service. The procurement service allowed government customers to create RFPs via the website and release them for distribution to potential bidders. Contractors would then submit proposals through the website. The Department concluded that this service was not taxable because providing customers with the ability to distribute their RFPs is not an enumerated service. The notification service allowed the contractors to identify and respond to more bid opportunities by: (1) constantly monitoring all known government RFP releases; (2) inputting them into its database; and (3) notifying the customers of potentially applicable RFPs. The Department concluded that this service was a taxable information service and the “personal or individual” information exclusion did not apply because the information was derived from a common database.
