Washington State

Office of the Attorney General

Attorney General

Bob Ferguson

AGO 1984 NO. 1 >

Lands which are owned by an incorporated city or town (including but not limited to those situated outside the corporate limits of that municipality) are not subject to weed district assessments imposed pursuant to RCW 17.04.240.

AGO 2002 NO. 1 >

1.  A county may not use revenue from taxes levied under RCW 82.14.370 to acquire or install fiber optic cable for a utility which provides cable service to the county but which is privately owned and operated.  2.  RCW 82.14.370, in limiting the use of special sales tax revenue to “public facilities”, does not specify the extent to which an operation might be jointly owned or operated in a public/private partnership and still remain a “public facility”.

AGO 1980 NO. 1 >

(1) Except where prohibited by RCW 42.17.260(5), inspection and copying of an assessor's property tax assessment roll and supporting materials must be allowed unless the specific exemptions covering taxpayer information, as set forth in RCW 42.17.310(1)(c) and RCW 84.40.020, are applicable in a given case.  (2) Real property assessment rolls prepared pursuant to RCW 84.40.020 and 84.40.160 are lists of taxable property and not individuals and, therefore, their disclosure is not prohibited by RCW 42.17.260(5) even for a commercial purpose; whether this is also true of personal property assessment rolls will depend upon their actual form.

AGO 2001 NO. 2 >

Article II, section 40 of the Washington Constitution requires revenues from taxes measured by the volume of motor vehicle fuel to be used exclusively for highway purposes; a tax measured by the value of the product sold rather than the volume would probably not be subject to this constitutional restriction unless the tax were structured in such a way that it was really on volume and not on value.

AGO 1978 NO. 2 >

Given
that the timber excise tax imposed by RCW 82.04.291 will expire on
December 31, 1978, under existing legislation, if the legislature were
to reimpose the tax during its next (1979) regular session, effective
January 1, 1979, such an enactment would be constitutionally valid;
moreover, this would be so even if the rate of the tax as reimposed were
to be different than the present rate; however, in order to strengthen
the defensibility of any such legislation it is recommended that it be
enacted into law and signed by the governor on or before March 1, 1979.

AGO 1991 NO. 2 >

1.  RCW 84.56.023 authorizes counties to accept payment of property taxes by credit card.  If the county utilizes this procedure, it must collect fully payment of taxes, interest and penalties without discount.  2.  RCW 84.56.023 does not grant the county the authority to collect from the taxpayer a service fee on behalf of the bank issuing the credit card.

AGLO 1979 NO. 2 >

A noncharter code city may levy a city business and occupation tax on the gross receipts of parimutuel machines at a horse race course that is situated within the corporate limits of the city.

AGO 1990 NO. 3 >

1.  A municipality that imposes a tax on its electric utility department pursuant to RCW 35.21.860 and [35.21].865 may measure the tax by the utility department's gross revenues, derived from the utility's customers located both inside and outside the city, so long as the tax is within constitutional limits. 2.  A municipality may not levy a tax on another municipality without express authority.  RCW 35.21.860 and [35.21].865 do not authorize one municipality to levy a tax on the electric utility department of another municipality.

AGO 1969 NO. 3 >

The real estate excise tax provided for by chapter 28.45 RCW does not apply to a conveyance of real property from the owner thereof to himself as trustee for his own benefit, with the right to revoke the trust at any time prior to death being reserved, and with his children being designated as alternative beneficiaries in the event that the trust is not thus revoked prior to death.