Court Opinion

ID: 9884392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:54:46.464766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:38.048986
License: Public Domain

STRINGER, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I agree with the majority that the ultimate question here is whether the “essence, of the transaction”1 was the sale of printed material, or whether the printed material supplied was merely incidental to that for which Questar’s customers contracted — the data results. In concluding it is the latter, I resort to the time honored axiom that we should not exalt form over substance. I would affirm the tax court.
The transaction here is not complicated. Questar’s customers want information that can only be developed through questionnaires to be used in market surveys and the raw data from the completed questionnaires are processed by Questar into the form the customer desires. The questionnaire is nothing more than a tool in gathering the raw data; in and of itself it is of no value to Questar’s Qustomers. It attains value only when it has been filled out by its recipient and provides information that, when processed by Questar in conjunction with all the other completed questionnaires, will produce the information Questar’s customer seeks.
In determining whether Questar sold the printed materials or used them in its business for purposes of which tax is applicable, we really need go no further than Questar’s own description of its operations: “Our approach integrates knowledge of survey techniques and statistical analysis procedures, superior data capture and data management processes and state-of-the-industry data display software.” Questar Data Systems, Inc., Proposal for the Mayflower Group 1 (January 17, 1992). Presumably those customers who could process their own data would do so, and in such eases would purchase only the materials. But for those instances there is no quarrel; a sales tax is payable. We deal here with instances where the customer, for whatever reason, chooses not to process the raw data and relies on Questar to provide it with a package of services designed to produce for the customer the desired information.
The majority’s focus on the formalism of the customer’s name on the materials, the separate billing for the materials, and who has custody of the materials and when, to reach its conclusion that the questionnaires are sold by Questar and are not used by it seems to wholly miss the point: Questar’s customers seek information, not a stack of blank questionnaires accompanied by instructions on how to complete them. As the tax court found: “Questar is in the business of gathering information for its clients through surveys and tests” and “uses the Printed Materials in its business whenever it provides Data Processing Services and Printed Materials to its clients.” There was ample evidence to support the tax court finding that in these circumstances the printed materials are used by Questar for purposes of 297A.14, subd. 1.
*930The notion of focusing on the “essence of the transaction” is carried over to Minn. R. 8130.9700, subp. 4 (1995), and a comparison is helpful. Addressing the tax status of providing primarily a data processing service to the customer’s data, the rule states that “[t]he true object of these contracts is considered to be a service, even though some tangible personal property is incidentally transferred to the client. ” Id. (emphasis added).
Finally, it is of concern that the majority seems to have permitted Questar to successfully shape the taxability of its transaction with its customers through a series of formalistic steps that substantively have little meaning; the notion of “the essence of the transaction” seems to have been lost.

. Cf. Fingerhut Prods. Co. v. Commissioner of Revenue, 258 N.W.2d 606, 610 (Minn.1977) (implicitly approving the "essence of the transaction” approach in deciding whether mailing lists rented by a direct mail merchandiser from mailing list brokers constituted tangible personal properly within the contemplation of Minn.Stat. § 297A.14).