Senate Bill No. 136
(By Senators Minard, Oliverio, McCabe and D. Facemire)
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[Introduced January 13, 2010; referred to the Committee on
Banking and Insurance.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §46A-7-115 of the Code of West
Virginia, 1931, as amended, relating to consumer credit and
protection generally; requiring persons engaged in making
consumer credit sales and certain other consumer-related
activities to register with the Commissioner of Banking
instead of filing a notification with the Tax Division;
setting forth the provisions of a registration form; providing
for a registration fee; and exempting certain other
organizations and individuals from the registration
requirements.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §46A-7-115 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as
amended, be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 7. ADMINISTRATION.
§46A-7-115. Notification.
(1) Every person engaged in this state in making consumer
credit sales or consumer loans, including any person subject to the
provisions of section five-a, article twenty-three, chapter eleven
of this code, as a result of their consumer lending or any person
who regularly purchases retail installment contracts or other
consumer paper from a business with which it is affiliated, and
every person having an office or place of business in this state
who takes assignments of and undertakes direct collection of
payments from or enforcement of rights against debtors arising from
such the sales or loans, shall
file notification register with the
State Tax Department commissioner within thirty days after
commencing business in this state and, thereafter, on or before
the
thirty-first day of January 31 of each year.
A notification shall
be deemed to be in compliance with this section if the information
hereinafter required is given in an application for a business
registration certificate provided for in section four, article
twelve, chapter eleven of this code. The
State Tax commissioner
shall make any
registration information required by this section
available to the Attorney General
or commissioner upon request.
The
notification registration shall
be in a form prescribed by the
commissioner, accompanied by a registration fee of $150 and shall
contain any information as the commissioner may require and, in
addition, shall state:
(a)
The name of the person;
(b)
The name in which business is transacted if different from
subdivision (a) of this subsection;
(c)
The address
of the principal office, which may be outside
this state;
(d)
The address of all of its offices, if any, in this state
at which consumer loans are made, or in the case of a lender credit
card, a description of its affiliation to any store chain, or
national or regional credit card acceptance system, or in the case
of a person taking assignments of obligations, the offices or
places of business within this state at which business is
transacted;
(e) If consumer credit sales or consumer loans, including
loans secured by real property, are made otherwise than at its
retail store or office in this state, a brief description of the
manner in which they are made;
and
(f)
The address of
the designated agent upon whom service of
process may be made in this state.
and
(g) Whether regulated consumer loans are made.
(2) If information in a
notification registration becomes
inaccurate after filing, accurate information
must shall be filed
within thirty days.
(3) The provisions of this section are not applicable to a
seller whose credit sales consist entirely of sales made pursuant
to a seller's credit card
so as long as the issuer of the card has fully complied with the provisions of this section, nor are the
provisions of this section applicable to a person whose consumer
lending in West Virginia is incidental and confined to access
through a nonproprietary automatic teller machine or similar
electronic communication terminal.
This section is not applicable
to federally insured depository institutions or to other persons
licensed, regulated or chartered by the commissioner pursuant to
article four of this chapter, article seventeen, chapter thirty-one
of this code or chapters thirty-one-a and thirty-one-c of this
code.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to require persons engaged
in making consumer credit sales and certain other consumer related
activities to register with the Commissioner of Banking instead of
filing a notification with the Tax Division. The bill sets forth
registration form requirements and provides a registration fee.
Under the bill, certain other organizations and individuals are
exempted from the registration requirements.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added.