Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 23, 1995 TAG: 9501230091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The tax raises about $300 million a year for local Virginia governments. Allen wants to phase it out over five years and replace it with money from state-level spending cuts.
``Make your voices heard, make your views known by those members of the General Assembly,'' Allen said Saturday at the Realtors' mid-winter meeting at a downtown Richmond hotel. The legislature will hold a joint public hearing Wednesday on the tax.
Allen said doing away with the tax is important because it discourages businesses from locating in Virginia.
``If we want to be a more competitive state for folks to invest and locate jobs, we have to eliminate this gross-receipts tax,'' Allen said.
He said the ``most-despised'' tax applies even to businesses that lose money. ``Gosh, the federal government even won't do something like that to folks.''
Allen said he wants to extend indefinitely the promise of replacement funds for dollars lost by eliminating the tax, even beyond his term as governor. After the 1998 biennial budget, the last Allen will compile, there will be normal revenue growth, making room for the replacement dollars, he said.
That means localities could reimpose their business professional and occupational taxes in any year the state does not supply it. ``And the legislature will have their fingerprints on it because they'll be the ones responsible,'' Allen said in an interview after his speech.
Allen also asked the Realtors to help him get his tax-and-spending-cut budget amendments past ``these pathetic big-government dinosaurs'' in the General Assembly.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB