West Virginia Public News Service – Cash-strapped West Virginia counties are watching a special tax committee at the legislature with dread. Read
The Joint Select Committee on Fair Taxation may consider cuts to severance and business inventory taxes. Both could land hard on the counties, which have already struggled with falling revenue for several years.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper says if state lawmakers want to attract new businesses – as they say they do – it would be smarter to invest in education and infrastructure.
“Most of the business people that I talk to, and I talk to a lot of them, are interested in the quality of life here,” Carper says. “Do we have good schools? Do we have good roads?”
The legislature’s Republican leadership says it wants to cut business taxes to spark job growth. But according to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, slashing business taxes a decade ago didn’t bring a promised boom, and only left a big hole in public budgets.
