CHAPTER 514

AN ACT creating a Commission to Study State and Local Revenues and
Expenditures and Related Matters; the need for additional revenues,
if any, and the advisability of the adoption of a general retail sales
and use tax; to prescribe the Commission’s powers and duties, and
to make an appropriation to cover the cost of the study. 5

[S 274]

Approved March 30, 1956

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:
1. § 1. A Commission to be known as the Commission on State and Local
Revenues and Expenditures and Related Matters, hereinafter referred to
as “the Commission”, is hereby created. The Commission shall be com-
posed of eleven members, two of whom shall be appointed by the President
of the Senate from the membership of that body; three by the Speaker of
the House of Delegates from the membership of that body, and six by
the Governor. The members of the Commission shall be reimbursed their
actual expenses incurred in the performance of their duties under this act.

§ 2. The Commission shall begin its work as soon as possible and
shall complete its study and make its report to the Governor and to the
General Assembly not later than September one, nineteen hundred fifty-six.
A copy of the report shall be promptly mailed to each member and member-
elect of the General Assembly. In the course of its study the Commission
may hold such public hearings in various parts of the State as it may
deem necessary or advisable. The Commission may call upon any officer
or agency of the State for information, may avail itself of the services
of the Division of Statutory Research and Drafting, and may employ such
other technical and secretarial personnel as it deems necessary in its work.

§ 3. The Commission shall make a thorough study of all State and
local taxes, revenues, receipts, and expenditures; the apportionment be-
tween the State and its localities of the sources of revenue; the demands
on the State and its localities for governmental services and the ability o1
the State and its localities to meet them; and the allocation of governmental
functions as between the State on the one hand and its localities on the
other, including State and local support of functions that are jointly
financed by the State and its localities. Such study shall also include the
ascertainment and appraisal of the existing burden of local taxes on real
estate, tangible personal property, machinery and tools, merchants’ capital,
licenses and other subjects that are taxable locally, and its economic con-
sequences; and the ascertainment and appraisal of the existing burden of
State taxes on each of the subjects of taxation on which the State imposes
a tax, and its economic consequences.

_ § 4. The Commission shall also make a thorough study of the ques-
tion of the advisability of the adoption of a general retail sales and use
tax as a means of raising additional revenue. In studying the general retail
sales and use tax the Commission shall consider and report what adjust-
ments or repeals, if any, should be enacted as to existing subjects of taxa-
tion, State and local, if such a tax is enacted; what method of distribution
of the proceeds of such a tax as between the State and its localities should
be adopted if such a tax is enacted, or the application of the proceeds or a
part of the proceeds from such a tax, if enacted, to increasing State aid
appropriations to the localities for governmental functions that are jointly
financed by the State and its localities. If the findings of the Commission
justify a recommendation on its part for the levy of a general retail sales
and use tax it shall include in its report a tentative draft of a general retail
sales and use tax bill and shall enumerate the exemptions recommended,
if any, and the reasons for each recommended exemption. The term “gen-
eral sales and use tax,” as used in this act is not restricted to such a tax
on the sale, lease or use of tangible personal property. The Commission
shall also include in its report tentative drafts of any other bill or bills
to carry into effect such recommendations as it shall make hereunder in any
other matter.

2. For the purpose of defraying the cost of the study, including the
printing of the report, there is hereby appropriated to the Commission,
out of the general fund of the State treasury, a sum not exceeding fifty
thousand dollars.

An emergency exists and this act is in force from its passage.