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MIDDLEBOURNE -- Tyler County commissioners recently rejected an application for relief from erroneous assessment by the West Virginia Tax Department on first-year producing natural gas wells, saying it was unfair to pass an error that cost the county nearly $16 million in tax revenue to county taxpayers.
The vote to reject -- and forfeit the $15.8 million -- was met with a round of applause from the large contingent of Tyler County residents that attended a meeting last week to discuss the tax department's error in submitting property tax valuations for first-year producing wells that were undervalued. Through that error, Tyler County lost $15.8 million in tax revenue.
"It all fell on us to do what we thought was right for our citizens," Commissioner Eric Vincent said.
Deanna Sheets, director of property tax for the West Virginia Tax Division, fielded questions from residents for more than an hour.
Due to the number of residents in attendance, the meeting was moved from the commission chambers at the Tyler County Courthouse to the third-floor courtroom.
In the end, Sheets said the commission had two choices. It could approve the application for relief, which would put the burden to recover the $15.8 million on the commission by assessing the owners of the wells, or it could reject the application and forfeit the $15.8 million.
Sheets said what the tax department labeled a "clerical error" would affect those who owned first year wells. She said producers are required to report production numbers to the tax department, and an error was made when the well production numbers were not annualized. A total of 187 out of 75,000 wells fell into this category resulting in an increase in the assessment values of the wells' production.
Tyler County residents peppered Sheets with many questions, asking how such an error could happen and why they will have to pay taxes again based on the new numbers. All who spoke felt it was unfair for the taxpayers to have to re-up their taxes based on an error by the tax department.
Tyler County had by far the largest tax impact among affected counties. Marshall County was next with $5.3 million, then Brooke County with $4.4 million, Monongalia and Wetzel counties with $1.6 million each, Doddridge County with more than $1 million, Harrison County with $275,879 and Pleasants County with $110,277.
Marshall County Commission will have tax department representatives at its meeting at 9:30 a.m. today to discuss an application for relief.
Randy Rutherford contributed to this report.