Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration failed to provide timely tax refunds worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Virginia corporations two years in a row, an error made public Wednesday after Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears inquired about an odd footnote in a financial presentation to the House and Senate money committees.
After Youngkin (R) gave an upbeat assessment of the state’s finances to the committees, Finance Secretary Stephen E. Cummings presented the members with a slide show with more details. One of the slides noted “a backlog of corporate refunds [that] had accumulated from prior years,” and Earle-Sears (R) asked about it.
Cummings acknowledged that the administration had “pushed aside” the routine work of processing corporate refunds in its haste to mail tax rebates to individual taxpayers in the fall of 2022 and 2023. The timing of the individual refunds, which landed in mailboxes just before Election Day both years with Youngkin’s name on them, was widely criticized as politically motivated.
Youngkin, who often complains that Virginians are “overtaxed,” won $5 billion in tax relief in his first two years in office — including the two rounds of tax rebates for individuals. As the Department of Taxation issued those rebates, Cummings said, it diverted staff from processing routine corporate refunds — owed not due to any new tax breaks, but because the businesses had overestimated their earnings.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Laura Vozzella over at The Washington Post
