The leader of the House of Delegates committee that oversees state tax laws wants to broaden a largely fruitless five-year examination of tax preferences as a way to potentially lower Virginia’s tax rates on individual income, sales and corporations.
House Finance Chairman R. Lee Ware Jr., R-Powhatan, said Monday that he wants the Joint Subcommittee to Evaluate Tax Preferences to take a broader look at tax exemptions that currently total $8.3 billion in revenue the state doesn’t collect.
“They make our taxes less simple, transparent, neutral and stable,” Ware said, citing tax principles the subcommittee endorsed when it first met in 2012. “They narrow the tax base and require substantially higher tax rates to generate the same revenue if they did not exist.”
