TEI and FTA hold liaison meeting on state and local issues.

• Position: Tax Executives Institute and Federation of Tax Administrators

On December 11, 1992, Tax Executives Institute met with the Board of Trustees of the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA). FTA is the organization of state tax commissioners, which is dedicated to improving the standards and techniques of tax administration. Its current President is Ronald Schreiner, Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Revenue, and its Executive Director is Harley T. Duncan.

In addition to Messrs. Schreiner and Duncan, the FTA's delegation to the liaison meeting included representatives of the following States: Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. TEI's delegation to the meeting was chaired by TEI President Bob Perlman and Harry McKeon, chair of the Institute's State and Local Tax Committee. In addition, Thomas Nied and Sandy Navin (both members of TEI's Executive Committee) and Robert Meehan (vice chair of the State and Local Tax Committee) participated, as did Michael Murphy and Timothy McCormally of the Institute's staff.

The liaison meeting featured lively discussions of a number of prominent, even controversial, state and local issues. For example, the efforts of some States to tax the pension income of nonresidents generated considerable discussion about the likelihood (and desirability) of federal legislation to preempt the States' rights in this area. The question of the refund of unconstitutionally collected taxes -- which is currently before the Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia -- also sparked diverse comments both between TEI and the FTA Board and among FTA Board members themselves. The discussion focused on how to best vindicate the constitutional rights of taxpayers while being cognizant of the revenue needs of the States. Suffice it to say that, pending the decision in Harper, the parties "agreed to disagree."

Among the other issues discussed during the liaison meeting were the Institute's continuing efforts to promote uniform and equitable administrative procedures in the States and the need for definitive guidance on the effect of the Supreme Court's decisions in Quill, Wrigley, Allied-Signal, and Kraft. With respect to the former, the Institute recently completed work on a series of position papers on so-called level...