Good grief, NO!!! Have you completely lost your mind, Viv? If Virginia beach imposes an income tax, I move to Chesapeake. If all Chesapeake does, I move to Moyock. If something this idiotic is even discussed in N.C., I move to New Hampshire, where the citizenry would likely burn down the town hall before a local income tax would be imposed. And If I would vacate Tidewater, you can bet many, many others would do so as well. Probably before I would make it out of town.

Wanna turn the seven cities into the seven ghost towns? Go ahead with an idea like this. It’s a guarantee. You think the regional tax rip-off and the abusive driver fees…

(abusive cop scams is a more accurate name for that debacle, but I digress)

…fell hard and fast? This idea would fall like a stone, as Tidewater empties and property values plummet.

tx2vadem – I didn’t mean that the income tax should be used for transportation. I was thinking in much more general terms.

But as a source for general county revenues, I think it is a good idea. It would be nice if the counties had a more diverse taxation structure rather than relying so heavily on real estate taxes. Up in NoVA that has forced many of the counties to increase the rate to keep up with falling real estate prices. I would like us to get rid of personal property tax and maybe an local option on the income tax could help us do that. Also, PPT seems like a bad idea because your tax base is depreciating every year (or at least I think it would on a net basis factoring in new purchases).

Don – I threw out my opinion on the way I’ve seen the tax implemented in other areas. NYC, for example, or Cleveland. That is not the way the code is written.

anon – I agree that it’s not wasteful to have the state – which is already in the business of collecting income taxes – to collect the local tax. I believe that is the way that the other states handle it.

As for the tax itself, I’m agnostic. One way or another, the city is going to get the money it needs to keep running, so I’m going to pay whatever method they use. I suppose an income tax beats worrying about how much our assessed home values will be arbitrarily increased each year.

I already pay 4X the property tax rate on my business equipment as homeowners pay, in addition to the BPOL tax, and I have no say in how much tax is assessed or how it is spent. If Norfolk were to add an income tax as well, I think that would be the last straw. I’d close this practice and reopen where I vote. I suspect many businesses would do the same, relocating to nearby cities without an income tax.

Give it 10 years and Norfolk would be nothing but government offices and housing projects.

However, the reason we do not have a local income tax, I thought, was that the car tax was supposed to provide that local income. I do not want both an income tax and a car tax, any more than I would support a federal consumption tax without a repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.

A local income tax is not a solution I’d reach for first, but I think that – short of a significant change in leadership in Richmond – it’s one that NoVA will have to start looking at.