ENROLLED
COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE
FOR
Senate Bill No. 181
(Senators Jackson and Kessler, original sponsors)
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[Passed March 14, 1998; in effect ninety days from passage.]
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AN ACT to repeal section twenty-five, article one-a, chapter
eleven of the code of West Virginia, one thousand nine
hundred thirty-one, as amended; to amend and reenact section
ten, article three of said chapter; and to amend and reenact
section three, article twelve-d of said chapter; all
relating generally to the assessment and taxation of real or
personal property; providing for discretionary penalties for
refusal to furnish proper list of property, for refusal to
answer or for answering falsely questions posed by assessor
or tax commissioner, or for refusal to deliver statement;
requiring office of business registration or other
appropriate section of the department of tax and revenue to
annually provide a list of businesses registered within a
county to the county assessor at no cost; limiting fee for
additional lists; and making certain technical provisions.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That section twenty-five, article one-a, chapter eleven of
the code of West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one,
as amended, be repealed; that section ten, article three of said
chapter be amended and reenacted; and that section three, article
twelve-d of said chapter be amended and reenacted, all to read as
follows:
ARTICLE 3. ASSESSMENTS GENERALLY.
§11-3-10. Failure to list property, etc.; collection of
penalties and forfeitures.
If any person, firm or corporation, including public service
corporations, whose duty it is by law to list any real estate or
personal property for taxation, refuses to furnish a proper list
thereof or refuses to list within the time required by law, or if
any person, firm or corporation, including public service
corporations, refuses to answer or answers falsely any question
asked by the assessor or by the tax commissioner, or fails or
refuses to deliver any statement required by law, he, she or it
may forfeit, at the discretion of the assessor or the tax
commissioner for good cause shown, not less than twenty-five nor
more than one hundred dollars, and shall be denied all remedy
provided by law for the correction of any assessment made by the
assessor or by the board of public works. If any person, firm or
corporation, including public service corporations, required by
law to make return of property for taxation, whether the return
is to be made to the assessor, the board of public works, or any other assessing officer or body, fails to return a true list of
all property which should be assessed in this state, including
notes, bonds, bills and accounts receivable, stocks and any other
intangible personal property, the person, firm or corporation, in
addition to all other penalties provided by law, shall forfeit
one percent of the value of the property not yet returned and not
otherwise taxed in this state. A forfeiture as to all property
aforesaid may be enforced for any such default occurring in any
year not exceeding five years immediately prior to the time the
default is discovered, but no liability to penalty or forfeiture
as to notes, bonds, bills and accounts receivable, stocks and
other intangible personal property arising prior to the first day
of January, one thousand nine hundred thirty-three, is
enforceable on behalf of the state or of any of its subdivisions.
Each failure to make a true return as herein required constitutes
a separate offense, and a forfeiture shall apply to each of them,
but all forfeitures, to which the same person, firm or
corporation is liable, shall be enforced in one proceeding
against the person, firm or corporation, or against the estate of
any deceased person, and may not exceed five percent of the value
of the property not returned. Forfeitures shall be collected as
provided in article two, chapter eleven-a of this code, the same
as any tax liability, against the defaulting taxpayer, or in case
of a decedent, against his or her personal representative. The
sheriff shall apportion such fund among the state, county, district, school district and municipalities which would have
been entitled to the taxes upon the property if it had been
assessed, in proportion to the rates of taxation for each levying
unit for the year in which the judgment was obtained bears to the
sum of rates for all. When the list of property returned by the
appraisers of the estate of any deceased person shows an amount
greater than the last assessment list of the deceased person next
preceding the appraisal of his or her estate, it is prima facie
evidence that the deceased person returned an imperfect list of
his or her property:
Provided, That any person liable for the
tax or his or her personal representative, may always be
permitted to prove by competent evidence that the discrepancy
between the assessment list and the appraisal of the estate is
caused by a difference of valuation returned by the assessor and
that made by the appraisers of the same property or by property
acquired after assessment, or that any property enumerated in the
appraisers' list had been otherwise listed for taxation, or that
it was not liable for taxation. Any judgment recovered under
this section is a lien, from the time of the service of the
notice, upon all real estate and personal property of the
defaulting taxpayer, owned at the time or subsequently acquired,
in preference to any other lien.
ARTICLE 12D. ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE OF BUSINESS REGISTRATION;
CREATION OF CENTRALIZED RECORDS.
§11-12D-3. Agency contact list; dispersal of data base information to agencies; agency contact with prospective
businesses.
(a) An agency contact list consisting of state government
agencies and offices having registration, licensing or other
similar statutory provisions related to the initiation of new
businesses in West Virginia or which should otherwise have
contact with a new business, will be maintained by the office of
business registration in conjunction with the centralized records
for new business registration.
(b) Based upon the proposed location, size, number of
employees, type of business, standard industry code or codes and
other pertinent information relating to the business, each
prospective new business, upon having a record established in the
centralized records for new business registration, shall be
informed by the office of business registration of the state
agencies or offices having a registration, licensing and other
similar statutory provisions related to the initiation of a new
business in West Virginia or other function relating to
prospective new business such that the agency or office should by
law or regulation be given notice of the establishment or
operation of a new business in West Virginia. The office of
business registration shall establish a record of the new
business in the centralized data base for the use and benefit of
any agency or officer of the state of West Virginia having access
to the data base and which should by law or regulation receive notice of the establishment or operation of a particular
business. The record should contain information necessary to
fulfill the regulatory, registration or licensing function of the
agency, or in lieu of such information, the name, address and
other pertinent information relating to the particular business
whereby the agency or office may initiate procedures or make
contact with the particular business as is appropriate for the
fulfillment of the regulatory, registration, licensing or other
statutory duties of the office or agency.
(c) The office of business registration or some other
appropriate section of the department of tax and revenue shall
provide a list of the names and addresses of all registered
businesses located within each county to the county assessor.
The list shall be provided at no cost to the county assessor
between the first day of July and the first day of August of each
year. Any additional list of businesses provided to the county
assessor before the next annual list is provided shall be
provided at no more than the actual cost to reproduce the list.
The production of information required by the provisions of this
subsection shall be considered an exception to and not violative
of any requirement for confidentiality otherwise established
under the provisions of this chapter.
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