Aired: January 25, 2011
WTVR – Report by Angela Pellerano
Published: January 21, 2011
Williams: Virginia’s new tax-filing system benefits vendors, not taxpayers
By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
RICHMOND, VA. — Virginia appears guided by the principle, if it ain’t broke, let’s privatize it and see what happens!
The commonwealth had a free online site for people to file state taxes — a service with nearly unanimous user satisfaction. But the General Assembly and Gov. Bob McDonnell, intent on curing a nonexistent malady, abolished the Virginia iFile program last year in favor of private vendors.
Virginia replaced iFile with the misleadingly named Virginia Free File, whose website is a veritable billboard for commercial tax preparers. State residents earning more than $58,000 will have to pay to file.
Virginia iFile cost less than $50,000 a year. Switching programs could end up costing the state more money if the 90,000 filers who no longer will be able to e-file for free go back to paper returns, which the Taxation Department estimates would cost $1 each to process.
Del. Betsy Carr, D-Richmond, has submitted a bill that would reinstate iFile in January 2012.
“It seems like to me the legislation last year eliminated a service that was free to taxpayers, saved the state money and did not require taxpayers to share sensitive information with for-profit companies,” Carr said. “The apparent beneficiaries of last year’s legislation were private companies who want to profit by serving as middlemen between taxpayers and the commonwealth without providing any real value to citizens.”
The iFile interment was approved overwhelmingly in both chambers of the General Assembly, which leads to the conclusion that legislators are far more attuned to tax software lobbyists than taxpayers.
“It makes a lot of sense — state government doesn’t need to be doing everything,” Del. Kathy J. Byron, R-Campbell, the sponsor of the kill-iFile bill, said last year. “We’ve got to get back to the core services.”
Come again? Since when is tax collection, of all things, not a core service of government?
Carr said she understands that some services are best performed by the private sector. “But certainly, the collection of tax revenues is a uniquely government function.”
Members of the Commissioners of the Revenue Association of Virginia are to meet with Carr today to discuss her bill.
T. Scott Harris, president of the association and commissioner of revenue in Hanover County, said he and his peers used iFile to electronically transmit processed tax returns to Richmond. He said localities received a one-year extension to continue the practice. Whatever comes out of Carr’s legislation, the commissioners would like to avoid having to send reams of paper to Richmond.
“We’re not John Q. Public filing a single return. We were using that mechanism to send large quantities of tax information to Richmond,” he said. When last year’s change was being contemplated by legislators, “we spoke to people saying, ‘This is a system that works very well.’ ”
But who cares about working well when there’s a back to be scratched or an ideology to be pushed? It’s time for these politicians to return to the core government function of serving constituents instead of corporate benefactors.
mwilliams@timesdispatch.com
(804) 649-6815
___________________________________________________________________
Published: June 11, 2009
Williams: Carr a quiet force in politics
By Michael Paul Williams
Betsy Carr might be described as the accidental politician.
She likely wouldn’t have landed on the Richmond School Board if then-5th District representative Stephen B. Johnson hadn’t been caught at Richmond International Airport with three marijuana joints in his luggage.
Carr was selected to fill Johnson’s term after his resignation in March 2006, and won election outright the following November. Two years later, she trounced opponent Otis Mallory.
It was a startling show of political muscle by a white candidate in a majority-black district. And now, after her win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Carr is well-positioned to become the 69th District representative in the House of Delegates.
She will face Republican Ernesto Sampson in November to represent a majority-black district that had been held by Democrat Franklin P. Hall for 33 years.
Carr has accomplished this with a bare minimum of words, fanfare and controversy.
“I don’t talk a lot,” she said yesterday at George Wythe High School’s graduation. “I just listen and respond and try to get people together to work and get things done. I think people appreciate that.”
Her rector at the church where she conducts community outreach certainly does.
“She is an inspiration to me and my ministry and my service and what I do, how I live,” said the Rev. D. Wallace Adams-Riley, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “She is such a compassionate person, a faithful person, dedicated to social justice, to serving and caring for all God’s children.”
Not everyone is a fan.
“Miss Carr is to be congratulated for running an exceptional campaign,” said 5th District Councilman E. Martin Jewell. But he said Carr “is backed by corporate money that tells the whole story” of whose interests she is advancing — namely, the powerful business community.
Jewell backed Antione Green, the president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, in the primary. He expressed disappointment that some prominent black politicians — Mayor Dwight C. Jones, state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III and state Sen. A. Donald McEachin — threw their weight behind corporate lawyer Carlos Brown.
Carr said Brown was the corporate community’s choice. “I think he outraised me and outspent me two times,” she said. During the filing period that ended May 27, Carr received $21,100 in itemized contributions and Brown $43,650, according to campaign finance reports.
The Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell of Richmond Hill knows Carr through their work with The Micah Initiative, a partnership between local faith communities and the Richmond Public Schools. He called her “a deeply concerned citizen who has done her homework in her own district . . . and has a significant track record working for public education in our city.
“She in no way represents a particular corporate interest, and her election is in no way based on money,” Campbell said. “Her support has always crossed racial lines, and her opposition has always crossed racial lines.”
Such is the makings of a political success story that defies convention. “This was not on my horizon,” said Carr, 62. But for this quiet force, the sky appears to be the limit.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
