DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710150195

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 11   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   36 lines

GETTING RID OF THE VIRGINIA PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX ON CARS

Crime, drugs, education and taxes they're issues that dominate the political debates. But they're also issues that affect the lives of people in in Hampton Roads.

To Emile Vautrinot, a truck driver at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard - Portsmouth, the best way to improve Virginia's economy would be to eliminate the personal property tax and replace it with a gradual increase in the state sales tax.

Vautrinot has grown children and one 16-year-old granddaughter.

``Governor Allen kind of had a neat idea, and everybody else stonewalled it. He wanted to get rid of the personal property tax and raise the sales tax to accommodate it, which I think would work. I'm no mathematician; I'm a truck driver. But I think it would work. The cost of things today like automobiles - the personal property tax hurts. I agree with a one-time personal property tax, but every single year? It kind of makes you wonder - is it (a car) mine? No, it's the state's. Because if I don't pay the personal property tax, they state can take it.

``With the price we have to pay for items, and the price we have to pay for personal property tax, to have something nice around here gets expensive. You know, an automobile, a decent automobile, costs $15,000. Personal property tax on that is - more than lunch.

``I'd keep on the idea of raising the states sales tax to eliminate the personal property tax. It wouldn't be that hard to do, and that way, everybody would pay, because you've got to eat, you've got to buy clothes. And it would in turn give the public more money to spend. In lieu of spending it on $500 a year on personal property, they would have that money to spend during the year. It would increase the coffers during the year, instead of just that one shot in the arm.''

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