The City of New York Office of Labor Relations (OLR) is seeking proposals from qualified vendors to provide asset allocation services for the Pre-Arranged Portfolios. The Request for Proposals will be available beginning on Friday, July 20, 2007. Responses are due no later than 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 4, 2007. To obtain a copy of the RFP, please visit the OLR web site at: http://nyc.gov/html/olr/html/requests/rfp.shtml If you have any questions, please submit them by fax to Georgette Gestely, Director, New York City Deferred Compensation Plan, at (212) 306-7376.

Pursuant to section 207.4 of the State Administrative Procedure Act, the Department of Taxation and Finance hereby gives notice of the following:

As part of the Department's 2007 review of rules that were adopted during 1997 and 2002, it has reviewed amendments to 20 NYCRR 528.7 (currently “Farming and commercial horse boarding operations”) of the Sales and Use Taxes Regulations. This rule was amended in 1997 to provide that personal protective equipment purchased by farmers for use directly and predominantly in farm production and construction materials that become integral component parts of the foundations of farm silos are exempt from tax. The amendments also made technical corrections to section 528.7. These amendments were previously reviewed as part of the Department's 2002 Rule Review published in the State Register on January 2, 2002. As a result of that review, substantial changes to section 528.7 of the regulations were adopted based on statutory changes enacted in 1999 and 2000, which significantly broadened the subject exemptions from tax. (See TAF-10-04-00025-A; filed April 29, 2004; published May 19, 2004; effective May 19, 2004.) However, certain technical corrections that were made in 1997 were continued without modification, specifically the grammatical and clarifying amendments made and the cross-reference added to section 528.7(c)(1). Therefore, only these technical corrections remain from the 1997 rule and were subject to review in 2007. The statutory authority for the rule is contained in sections 171, subd. First; 1115(a)(6); 1142(1); and 1250 (not subdivided) of the Tax Law.

These amendments are once again being continued without modification because they are merely technical in nature and there have been no statutory amendments or changes in policy to warrant any modification of the rule.

A summary of the rule was published in the Rule Review section of the January 3, 2007, issue of the State Register. The 2007 Rule Review, including the summary, was also posted to the Department's Web site (http://www.tax.state.ny.us/rulemaker/regulations/ fiveyearrev.htm) on January 2, 2007. The Department did not receive any public comments regarding this rule.

For further information contact: John W. Bartlett, Department of Taxation and Finance, Taxpayer Guidance Division, Bldg. 9, State Campus, Albany, NY 12227, (518) 457-2254

Pursuant to the provisions of section 1111(j)(2) of the Tax Law, the Commissioner of Taxation and Finance is required to give public notice of the base retail price adjustment calculation and the resulting base retail price of cigarettes for purposes of establishing the prepaid sales tax on cigarettes imposed by section 1103 of the Tax Law. Section 1111(j) of the Tax Law was amended by Chapter 85 of the Laws of 2002 to provide that the base retail price of cigarettes shall be adjusted each year by a factor based upon the manufacturers list price for a carton of standard brand cigarettes. There is no base retail price adjustment for the period September 1, 2007, through August 31, 2008. The base retail prices of cigarettes effective September 1, 2007, remain as follows:

The base retail price is adjusted annually, to take effect the first day of September.

For further information, including rates for previous periods, contact: Michael Parada, Taxpayer Guidance Division, Department of Taxation and Finance, State Campus, Albany, NY 12227, (518) 457-0346