GOP Legislators Seek Tax Reforms Now

While the Ruling Party spends this regular legislative session marking time and hopelessly trying to figure out how to retain their control of the Legislature in this year's elections, Republican legislators who are within striking distance of winning majorities in both houses are seeking to have real issues addressed during the 30 days remaining in this year's legislative session.

Today's case in point is the issue of taxes, as reported by the Beckley Register-Herald.

Republican legislators in both houses have offered over a dozen bills to cut state taxes and/or totally reform the state tax code. Bills have been offered in both houses to implement the comprehensive tax reform proposed in 1999 by Governor Underwood's Commission on Fair Taxation; to abolish the food tax; to abolish the business franchise tax; to reduce corporate income taxes; to reduce personal income taxes.

A bill to abolish the hated "motor vehicle privilege tax" that charges 5% of a car's value not only at the time a car is first bought as a new car but every time it is sold, transferred, or brought into West Virginia from another state, and replaced with the one-time occurrence of the sales tax at the time of initial purchase without the current multiple taxation, will soon be offered. This tax is especially odious because the same piece of personal property is repeatedly taxed although virtually every other class of personal property is subjected to a sales tax only once--at the time it is first purchased by the initial consumer.