Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Reforming "taxes" on telecommunications in Virginia

At the VATOA conference in Williamsburg, one of the speakers was Delegate Preston Bryant, who addressed on-going efforts to develop plans for "reforming taxes" on telecommunications in the Commonwealth. Industry speakers on the same topic were Richard Cornwell of Verizon and attorney Trey Adams of Troutman Sanders in Richmond.

The topic was a new one to me, reconciling the administrative costs for companies offering services in multiple jurisdictions without changing the revenue stream to localities. Evidently, efforts at such reform have been attempted in other states, including Florida, but no one at the conference claimed that Florida provided a model that Virginia could or should follow.

Delegate Bryant's committee is an off-shoot of the legislative tax reform committee which has been working on the subject for some years. This resolution authorized continuation of the study, which is the "Joint Subcommittee to Study the State and Local Taxation of the Entire Telecommunications Industry and Its Customers within the Commonwealth."

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