Hercules Inc. v. Commissioner of Revenue

OPINION

BLATZ, Chief Justice.

This ease requires us to examine the boundary between business and nonbusiness income for the purpose of determining a nondomieiliary corporation’s income tax. In 1987, relator Hercules, Inc., a Delaware corporation that conducts business in Minnesota, sold its stock in Himont, Inc., a corporation that Hercules had helped to create four years earlier. 1 The sale resulted in a net capital gain of over $1.3 billion, and Hercules reported this gain as nonapportionable income on its 1987 Minnesota corporate tax return. The Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue issued a…