The Mead Corp. v. The Department of Revenue

              1 Defendants note that the current Director, Brian Hamer, may be substituted for Bower,
who is the former Director.
SIXTH DIVISION
January 12, 2007
No. 1-03-1160
THE MEAD CORPORATION, an Ohio ) Appeal from the
Corporation, ) Circuit Court of
) Cook County
Plaintiff-Appellant, ))
v. ) No. 00 CH 7854
)
THE DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE, ) Honorable
GLEN L. BOWER, Director of the ) Alexander P. White,
Department of Revenue, and JUDITH BAAR ) Judge Presiding.
TOPINKA, Treasurer of the State of Illinois, ))
Defendants-Appellees. )
PRESIDING JUSTICE FITZGERALD SMITH delivered the opinion of the court:
Plaintiff Mead Corporation, an Ohio corporation (Mead or plaintiff), appeals three orders
of the circuit court concerning the classification and calculation of sales gain reported on its 1994
Illinois tax return, granting judgment in favor of defendants Illinois Department of Revenue
(Department), Glen L. Bower, Director of the Illinois Department of Revenue,1 and Judith Baar
Topinka, Treasurer of the State of Illinois (collectively, defendants). Mead filed a combined
unitary Illinois income tax return for the 1994 tax year, including Mead Data Central, Inc., Lexis,
Inc., and Nexis, Inc. (collectively, Lexis/Nexis), as members of its unitary business group, and
including in its Illinois combined apportionable business income the 1994 income earned by
Lexis/Nexis, but excluding the gain of more than $1 billion from the sale of Lexis/Nexis that
year. Mead also included its gross receipts from the sale of interest-bearing financial instruments