
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 26, 1993                   TAG: 9306280255
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STATE IS LIABLE FOR TAX REFUNDS

WHAT WRITER Alvin Toffler has described as "future shock," the result of accelerating changes in mores, the arts, politics, science and technology, is upon us. Your traumatized readers are doubtless comforted, however, by one enduring guide to sound judgments: accept as appropriate any idea or course of action opposed by editorial writers in the Roanoke Times & World-News.

The June 21 editorial, "Don't Give Up Yet on Retiree's Suit," illustrates the point. Your contention - that the United States Supreme Court's 1989 Davis decision "was not grounded in grand constitutional principle but in interpretation of a 5O-year-old statute" - is utter nonsense.

The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution is at the heart of this dispute. Under our federal system of government we have 51 legal systems, the laws and court systems of each of the 50 states and the federal system. Under the supremacy clause, when state law is in conflict with federal law, the federal system prevails. Until 1989, Virginia's tax code was clearly in conflict with a federal statute designed to protect federal workers and members of the United States military from discriminatory taxes imposed by the various states. Twice now, the U.S. Supreme Court has remanded this dispute to the Virginia Supreme Court to make the proper ruling. That is, to refund taxes erroneously collected for taxable years 1985-1988. Refunds were paid both in Davis vs. Michigan and Jim Beam vs. Georgia, the two previous cases that turned on retroactive repayments of taxes unlawfully collected by a state government.

Gov. Wilder, an experienced trial lawyer, knew the state of Virginia was liable after the Supreme Court's Davis decision and said as much at the time. So did members of the Virginia General Assembly, who in 1989 extended the statute of limitations for filing refund requests for 1985-1988 to one year from the final court decision resolving the application of Davis to Virginia's income-tax law.

If a citizen underpays taxes the state garnishees his wages and seizes his property. Even application of the law demands that the state refund overpayments unlawfully collected. GORDON E. SAUL ROANOKE

by CNB