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A tax collected accidentally

By John Doyle - Report From the Legislature | Aug 2, 2024

Back in April, I went into my friendly neighborhood chain convenience store to buy two daily newspapers (Washington Post and Martinsburg Journal). I usually pay a six percent tax, but this time I was charged seven percent.

Currently, the West Virginia state sales tax is six percent, and municipalities are permitted to levy an additional one percent. You pay a seven percent tax on an item purchased within the city or town limits, and a six percent tax when you purchase that same item from an establishment located outside municipal limits. Shepherdstown has enacted that “one percent add-on.”

The store in question (I think its name irrelevant) is located outside municipal limits, so that store should not have been charging that extra penny on the dollar. I brought this up with the store manager, who pleasantly informed me that corporate headquarters had told him the Legislature had recently enacted a bill to permit counties to charge that same “add-on” that municipalities have been charging for several years.

Having followed this year’s legislative session closely, I knew that to be incorrect, and I said so.

He checked with “corporate,” and they told him I was wrong. I then called my friends at the West Virginia Department of Revenue (WVDOR), where I was Deputy Cabinet Secretary for three years, and they assured me I was correct. They said they would check out this anomaly.

A few weeks later, the tax went back down to six percent. The store manager told me that “corporate” had been contacted by WVDOR and been enlightened.

Who ended up with that extra penny per dollar of tax accidentally, but illegally, collected during those several weeks? WVDOR is attempting to find out, but they tell me it’s possible they might never be able to determine where that money went. It might have gone to the Corporation of Shepherdstown, it might have gone to Jefferson County or it might have gone to the state. Even if that question is answered, it would be impossible to return every penny to the taxpayer who paid it (I’m one of them).

The proposal to permit counties to levy a one percent tax on sales made within that county but outside municipalities has been before the Legislature for several years. I support it, because counties in West Virginia (unlike those in most other states) are severely limited in sources of revenue. They are thus more severely constrained in their ability to provide needed public services than are counties in most other states. California’s “Jarvis-Gann” property tax limitation adopted in the 1970s got much of its language from a West Virginia provision adopted in 1932.

But I certainly don’t believe that any tax should be collected by a retailer, if such a collection has not been enacted into law by the Legislature. I have no idea of the identity of the lobbyist at the state capitol in Charleston for that corporation, but that person was perhaps asleep at the switch.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, who is currently running for a seat in the state senate. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.