Morgantown Dominion Post - Over the past several months, the Monongalia County Commission has been negotiating a “payment in lieu of taxes” (PILOT) deal with Longview Power LLC to build a gas-fired power plant. PILOT agreements are property tax abatements where corporations agree to make annual payments to local governments instead of paying the property…
Taxes
Although Congress allocated $1.25 billion in state fiscal aid for West Virginia in the CARES Act that passed last month, it's highly likely this will not be enough money to shore up state and local government budgets from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters worse, the U.S. Treasury issued guidance on…
Crises like the coronavirus outbreak create a double challenge for state governments. Demand for vital public services escalate just as the revenues to support those services take a major downturn. West Virginia is already in a tight budget situation, with resources stretched thin. Before the effects of the crisis were really felt, the state revenues…
While the tax bills passed during the 2020 Legislative Session are awaiting the governor's approval, most of the largest tax cut proposals failed to make it across the finish line but will likely return next year. Specifically, the legislature failed to place on the November 2020 ballot a constitutional amendment to repeal part or all…
On top of Senate Bill 655 that would reduce local property tax revenues from natural gas extraction, there are also several bills moving in the House that would give sizable tax reductions to natural gas and coal corporations. House BIll 4439 would expand a 35% tax credit on the coal severance tax that was passed…
Senate Republicans unveiled their latest proposal to eliminate the business personal property tax this week, passing the proposal out of the Senate Finance Committee. The plan, which builds upon an earlier proposal to eliminate the property tax on manufacturing equipment, machinery, and inventory, would blow a nearly $100 million hole in the state budget, introduce…
We are just over halfway through West Virginia’s 60-day legislative session, and there is plenty to talk about. Let’s dive right in. Tax and Budget 2020 has seen the perennial return to eliminate the Business Personal Property Tax on manufacturing, inventory, equipment and machinery. This is a critical source of revenue for our counties’ public…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - Back in 2007, the West Virginia Legislature dramatically changed the state’s tax system, reducing business taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The package included phasing out the business franchise tax and reducing the corporate net income tax from 9 percent to 6.5 percent. Other cuts and credits would follow.…
To get a sense of a state’s values, one often need look no further than its tax system. What a state spends its tax dollars on and how it acquires those tax dollars typically reveals a lot about the priorities of its people—what they care about and what they stand for. In theory, it’s a…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - Legislative leadership appears poised to pass yet another round of corporate tax cuts that will hurt working families, our schools and colleges, and push more money out-of-state to large corporations. It doesn’t have to be this way. Lawmakers could instead put their efforts toward investing in our communities, our health, our education, and…