Ezel / Tax Rulings / CA

How did California treat a canning service that cooked and sealed a customer's fruit or other commodity in cans?

Short answer The canning work was processing treated as a sale. The cans were regarded as sold with their contents and received the cited container exemption.
State
CA
Ruling
Annotation 435.0540
Tax type
Sales and Use Tax
Issued
1957-06-12
Issued by
California State Board of Equalization
Requested by
A district tax administrator asking about a business that processed and sealed customer-furnished fruit or other commodities in cans
Topics
fruit food processing customer furnished property containers
Source
View Original PDF

Apply this to your situation

This page answers the general question as of 1957. Ask about yours and see what current California tax law says, with citations.

Currency note: this ruling is from 1957
Subsequent statutory amendments, regulation changes, court decisions, or later rulings may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current tax advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, rate, or position mentioned here.
Disclaimer: This is a California State Board of Equalization sales-tax-counsel memorandum dated June 12, 1957, published by CDTFA as support for a sales and use tax annotation. It applies historical processing and container-exemption provisions to customer-furnished commodities cooked and sealed in cans. Another taxpayer should not treat it as binding and should check current canning, food-processing, customer-furnished-property, container, packaging, and sales-and-use-tax rules. This summary is informational only and is not legal or tax advice.
About this page: The plain-English summary, reader guidance, and Q&A below were written by Ezel based on the official state tax ruling. The original ruling (linked on this page as a PDF) is the authoritative source for any reliance.
View original ruling (PDF)

Plain-English summary

Customers brought fruit or other commodities to a canning business, placed them in the desired cans, and sent the cans through a line that cooked or steamed the contents and sealed the containers.

The work on the customer's commodity was processing under section 6006(c), as cited, and therefore fell within the statutory definition of a sale.

The cans containing the customer's commodity were regarded as sold with their contents, so the container exemption in section 6364 applied under the memorandum's historical analysis.

Citations and references

  • California Revenue and Taxation Code sections 6006(c) and 6364 (as cited)

Source

Original ruling text

State of California

Board of Equalization

Memorandum

To:

--- – District Tax Administrator

From:

Headquarters – Sales Tax Counsel (EHS:JDP)

Subject:

E--- U---, Inc.
XXX --- Avenue
---, California

435.0540
Sacramento
June 12, 1957

Account No. None

As indicated in your memorandum of May 27, the above entity operates a canning service type of business. The customer brings the fruit or other commodity to be canned to the above place of business and places it in the desired size can. The cans are then put on the processing line on which the contents are cooked, steamed, etc., the can going directly through the can sealing machine. It is our opinion that the work performed on the customer’s commodity constitutes a “processing” under Section 6006(c), which processing is included within the definition of “sale”. Therefore, the cans containing the customer’s commodity are regarded as being sold with the contents, so that the exemption provided for in Section 6364 applies.

E. H. Stetson

JDP:tl

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