ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 2, 1997 TAG: 9704020037
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
The law governing Virginia's retail sales and use tax is cluttered with dozens of exemptions. The General Assembly should look for ways to make it more equitable.
IN THE CODE of Virginia, the Retail Sales and Use Tax Act runs to roughly 50 pages. Nearly half of them deal not with imposing and administering the tax, but with exemptions from it.
The controversial exemption for certain purchases by churches raises intriguing First Amendment and other questions. (See, for example, the article at the bottom of this page.) But the church exemption is just one paragraph, about a quarter of one page. Raised by the many other paragraphs of sales-tax exemptions are broader questions about how the General Assembly goes about deciding sales-tax winners and, by implication, losers.
The exemptions (most anyway) are not prima facie ridiculous.
Doubtless, the "nonprofit organization ... organized to provide educational and recreational services for at-risk youth and which maintains a partnership with a magnet school within the boundaries of the Twenty-third Planning District" is a worthy enterprise.
Ditto the "nonprofit volunteer organization ... which is organized exclusively for the purpose of raising funds for grant aid to any state, county or municipal library open to the public within the boundaries of the Eighth Planning District."
We'll vouch for the "nonprofit organization ... organized exclusively to combat illiteracy by tutoring and training adults and by increasing community awareness of the illiteracy problem within the Roanoke Valley area."
But where do you stop? If Virginia lawmakers are going to exempt some charitable organizations from paying the sales tax, why not exempt them all? And if the lawmakers are unwilling to exempt all such organizations, is it fair to exempt only some?
The assembly could simply put an end to such exemptions. Or it could broaden them to include all nonprofit organizations to which contributions are recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as deductible on federal income-tax returns.
But the system as it is, while it might serve well the re-election interests of legislators able to win an exemption or two for the home folks, ill serves the cause of tax fairness.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB