Senate Bill No. 470
(By Senators Minard and Foster)
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[Introduced February 2, 2006; referred to the Committee
on Government Organization; and then to the Committee on
Finance.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §11-22-1 and §11-22-2 of the Code of
West Virginia, 1931, as amended, all relating to limiting each
county commission to imposing a mortgage recording tax of not
more than one dollar per thousand dollars.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §11-22-1 and §11-22-2 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931,
as amended, be amended and reenacted, all to read as follows:
ARTICLE 22. EXCISE TAX ON PRIVILEGE OF TRANSFERRING REAL PROPERTY.
§11-22-1. Definitions.
As used in this chapter:
(1) "Association" means a partnership, limited partnership or
any other form of unincorporated enterprise, owned or conducted by
two or more persons.
(2) "Corporation" means a corporation or joint-stock association, organized under the laws of this state, the United
States or any other state, territory or foreign country or
dependency including, but not limited to, banking institutions.
(3) "Commissioner" means the State Tax Commissioner.
(4) "Document" means any deed, or instrument or writing by
which any real property within this state or any interest in real
property is granted, conveyed or otherwise transferred to the
grantee, purchaser or any other person; but does not include wills,
transfer of real property where the value of the property
transferred is one hundred dollars or less, testamentary or inter
vivos trusts, deeds of partition, deeds made pursuant to mergers of
corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, limited
partnerships, testamentary or inter vivos trusts, deeds made
pursuant to conversions to limited liability companies from
corporations, partnerships, limited partnerships or trusts, deeds
made by a subsidiary corporation to its parent corporation for no
consideration other than the cancellation or surrender of the
subsidiary's stock, leases, transfers between husband and wife,
transfers between parent and child or transfers between parent and
child and his or her spouse, without consideration, transfers
between grandparent and grandchild or transfers between grandparent
and grandchild and his or her spouse, without consideration,
transfers without consideration between a principal and straw party
for any purpose, gifts to or transfers from or between voluntary charitable or educational associations or trustees of voluntary
charitable or educational associations and like nonprofit
corporations having the same or similar purposes, quitclaim or
corrective deeds without consideration, transfers to or from the
United States, the State of West Virginia, or to or from any of
their instrumentalities, agencies or political subdivisions, by
gift, dedication, deed or condemnation proceedings. or mortgages
or deeds of trust given as security for a debt
(5) "Limited liability company" means a limited liability
company organized under the laws of this state, the United States
or by any other state, territory or the District of Columbia.
(6) "Person" means every natural person, association or
corporation. Whenever used in any clause prescribing and imposing
a fine or imprisonment, or both, the term "person" as applied to
associations, means the partners or members of the association, and,
as applied to corporations, the officers of the corporation.
(7) "Transaction" means the delivering, accepting or presenting
for recording of a document.
(8) "Value" means in the case of any document not a gift, the
amount of the full actual consideration for the document, paid or
to be paid, including the amount of any lien or liens assumed; in
the case of a gift, or any other document without consideration, the
actual monetary value of the property conveyed or transferred. In
the event any document includes real property or any interest in real property lying outside the State of West Virginia or includes
personal property, value is the proportion of the consideration paid
in case of the transfer for consideration, or the proportion of the
true and actual value in case of a gift, which the actual value of
the real property located in West Virginia bears to the total actual
value of all the property, real or personal, transferred by the
document. The value as defined in this subdivision shall be stated
in the declaration of consideration or value provided for in section
six of this article.
§11-22-2. Rate of tax; when and by whom payable; additional
county tax.
Every person who delivers, accepts or presents for recording
any document, or in whose behalf any document is delivered, accepted
or presented for recording, other than a mortgage or deed of trust
given as security for a debt, shall be subject to pay for and in
respect to the transaction or any part thereof, a state excise tax
upon the privilege of transferring title to real estate at the rate
of one dollar and ten cents for each five hundred dollars' value or
fraction thereof as represented by such document as defined in
section one hereof, which state tax shall be payable at the time of
delivery, acceptance or presenting for recording of such document.
Effective January first, one thousand nine hundred sixty-eight
and thereafter, there is hereby imposed an additional county excise
tax for the privilege of transferring title to real estate at the rate of fifty-five cents for each five hundred dollars' value or
fraction thereof as represented by such document as defined in
section one hereof, which county tax shall be payable at the time
of delivery, acceptance or presenting for recording of such
document: Provided, That after the first day of July, one thousand
nine hundred eighty-nine, the county may increase said excise tax
to an amount equal to the state excise tax. The additional tax
hereby imposed is declared to be a county tax and to be used for
county purposes: Provided, however, That only one such state tax
and one such county tax shall be paid on any one document and shall
be collected in the county where the document is first admitted to
record, and the same shall be paid by the grantor therein unless the
grantee accepts the same without such tax having been paid, in which
event such tax shall be paid by the grantee: Provided further, That
on any transfer of real property from a trustee or a county clerk
transferring real estate sold for taxes, such tax shall be paid by
the grantee.
The county excise tax imposed under this section may not be
increased in any county unless the increase is approved by a
majority vote of the members of the county commission of such
county. Any county commission intending to increase the excise tax
imposed in its county shall publish a notice of its intention to
increase such tax not less than thirty days nor more than sixty days
prior to the meeting at which such increase will be considered, such notice to be published as a Class I legal advertisement in
compliance with the provisions of article three, chapter fifty-nine
of this code, and the publication area shall be the county in which
such county commission is located.
Every person who delivers, accepts or presents for recording
any mortgage or deed of trust given as security for a debt, or in
whose behalf any such mortgage or deed of trust document is
delivered, accepted or presented for recording, shall be subjected
to pay for and in respect to the transaction or any part thereof,
a state excise tax upon the privilege at the rate of fifty cents for
each five hundred dollars of debt secured or fraction thereof as
represented by such document as defined in section one hereof, which
state tax shall be payable at the time of delivery, acceptance or
presenting for recording of such document. All tax collected upon
the recordation of mortgages and deeds of trust shall be returned
to the clerks of the court for the exclusive purpose of implementing
such equipment and technology as may be required to comply with the
Uniform Electronic Transaction Act,
§
39A-1-1 et. seq.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to
limit each county
commission imposing a mortgage recording tax of not more than one
dollar per thousand dollars.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added.