The Texas Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that the U.S. Constitution requires some physical presence in the state to have nexus there, stating: “The Supreme Court has established a bright-line rule to determine whether a taxing state has a sufficient nexus with the taxpayer to allow taxation:  does the taxpayer have a physical presence in [the] state.”  (Galland Henning Nopak, Inc. v. Comptroller).  In this case, however, the taxpayer employed a regional manager who operated in Texas.  His job included acting as the taxpayer’s representative in Texas with its distributors – investigating, handling, and assisting in the resolution of customer complaints.  He did not have the power to accept sales, but did promote sales by answering technical questions about the taxpayer’s products.  The taxpayer had no other physical presence in Texas.  Acknowledging the presence of the regional manager, the taxpayer argued that those contacts were di minimis and should be ignored for purposes of determining nexus.  The court held that the continuous presence of the taxpayer’s regional manager in Texas exceeded the di minimis threshold and held that the taxpayer had nexus in the state.