Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 4, 1991 TAG: 9103040193
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Mag Poff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: Ann Meyers, spokeswoman for the State Department of Taxation, said Virginia does not tax earnings from United States Treasury bills, notes or bonds. You do not have to report that income.
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How to file
Q: In 1988 my wife and I filed separate federal and state tax returns in another state. My wife continued this for her state return in 1989 since her income was only the wages earned from that state while I had moved and started a new career in Virginia. She was subsequently laid off and collected unemployment compensation from the other state in 1990 after joining me in Virginia. Is it still advisable for her to file a separate return for her unemployment compensation or can we filed a joint return in that state?
A: Both of you are residents of Virginia, so both of you must file tax returns in this state.
Ann Meyers, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Taxation, said you can choose whether to file jointly or separately, depending on which option is most favorable to you. Since your wife moved to Virginia in 1990, she may choose between the regular tax form and the part-year resident return, which is form VA 760-PY. You should be able to obtain the proper forms from your local commissioner of revenue.
Your wife can file a non-resident return in the other state in order to claim a credit for any taxes she paid there, according to Meyers.
\ Twisted paper trail
Q: I have 120 shares of capital stock for Industrial Leasing Corp. in Winston-Salem, N.C., which were left to me by my father. However, I can find no information on this corporation, which was incorporated April 10, 1958, under North Carolina laws. I would appreciate any information.
A: The librarian at J.C. Bradford & Co. in Nashville found an extensive and confusing history on this stock.
She sent records showing that Industrial Leasing Corp. merged into Peabody Galion Corp. Sept. 28, 1971. The surviving corporation changed its name five years later to Peabody International Corp. It paid its dividends in new stock and also appears to have split a few times.
Peabody merged into the Pullman Co. under the name Pullman-Peabody Co. Oct. 24, 1985. That name changed to Pullman Co. in February 1988. Pullman Co. merged with Forstmann Little & Co. Sept. 15, 1988, and appears to have been taken private. Pullman stockholders should have turned in their stock then for $9.25 a share.
Your father should have been notified of these events, but he seems to have taken no action along the way.
Dean F. Penley, manager of the Roanoke office of J.C. Bradford & Co., said the only way to find out the worth of your shares now is to have a brokerage firm send it to the transfer agent. The agent will register the shares in whatever name is currently correct. The company has been bought and merged so many times that only the agent can put the shares on record. Once the shares are properly registered, it should be possible to check the market value, if any.
It's possible that the surviving company is still willing to pay its offer to get the shares off the market, Penley said. But there's no way to tell until they are updated.
\ No rating yet
Q: Recently I bought a single premium deferred annuity for my wife for a substantial amount of money. The contract is with Xerox Life of the Xerox Financial Services Co. at Des Moines, Iowa.
I did not know that the Xerox Co. has a financial arm or group. But the fact is that lately we hear and read a lot about so many insurance companies folding that, with the S&L debacles and the banks near to that, it makes you wonder what to do with the money you depend on so hard. We are both retired.
A: Best's Insurance Reports lists two companies with similar names. One is the Xerox Financial Life Insurance Co. of California, and the other is Xerox Financial Services Life Insurance Co. of Missouri. Both have their executive offices in Illinois.
Best's assigns both companies a grade of NA-3, which means they have been in business under the same management too short a period of time to qualify for a ranking. They were incorporated respectively in 1971 and 1982, but Best requires that an insurance company meet certain conditions for at least five consecutive years before it will issue an opinion on its soundness.
Xerox Financial Life is owned by Industrial Indemnity Co. of San Francisco, an insurance company, and Crum & Forster Inc., a national insurance underwriting firm.
Xerox Financial Services Life is owned by North River Insurance Co. of New Jersey and Crum & Forster.
All four of those owning companies are, in turn, subsidiaries of Xerox Corp.
\ Double-secret ratings
Q: According to a recent business magazine, banks are rated by the office of the Comptroller of the Currency from 1 to 5 according to a number of factors (capital position, quality of loans, management, earnings and liquidity).
To my knowledge this is not general public information. How is it obtained or is it available? It would seem to me that the public is entitled to this information for many reasons, yet recent information written in the newspaper in reference to banks' condition makes no mention of this type of rating system.
A: It's hard to argue that federal regulators have been on top of the banking and thrift situation over the years.
In government jargon, these are called the camel ratings, with each letter of that word referring to the factors you listed but but substituting assets for the second letter. Loans are among a bank's assets.
A spokesman in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington said that its rankings are for internal use only and are not made public. He said it applies only to federally chartered banks supervised by his office. Most major Virginia banks have state charters.
Guy W. Ford, who follows the banking industry for Scott & Stringfellow Investment Corp. in Norfolk, said he has never seen the government ratings. Nor has he ever tried to obtain a copy. Ford said the condition of a bank can be analyzed from its financial statements and other public information.
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on Monday, March 11, 1991 in the Business section\ Clarification
Anne Meyers, spokeswoman for the state Department of Taxation, has clarified her answer to a reader question published on the March 4 Money Page. The question was whether Virginia levies a tax on U.S. Treasury investments. She said correctly that the state does not tax those earnings. But the proper procedure is to report the income and then subtract it.
Meyers said the interest should be included in the taxpayer's adjusted gross income on Virginia basic Form 760. Then it should be subtracted on Line 42, which appears in Part 3 on the back of the tax form.
Memo: correction