The following covers the years 1782-1792. Some procedures may not have been used in all years. There were various reasons that a person might not show up on a 1790 personal property tax list. It is wise to check all years, just in case it was a mistake. Also check the land tax lists. Sometimes a person living with another family was listed by name one year then not in another. A person who worked as an overseer with a resident owner could be listed under his employer's name or simply in the total number of tithables (1788 on). When working with the VA state tax lists, namely those beginning in 1782, it is helpful to know the tax law applicable to the particular year. In the first decade, at least, there were frequent changes in the law. The laws for 1782-92, however, can be readily obtained from "Hening's Statutes at Large." The first thing to note is that these lists were designed to collect the state tax (known as the public levy), but were also used to collect the parish and county levies. The major change in the period was the replacement of the parish levy with the similar poor tax. For a number of years the state also levied a poll tax. It was the same as the tithe except that it applied only to free males above 21 and all slaves (called taxables or polls on the lists). There were some general exemptions in the law. In 1782, anyone, slave or free, who was exempted from the county levy by the county court, because of age or infirmity, was exempt from the poll tax. Later years may have exempted such slaves only, but the wording is unclear. This tax was repealed in 1787 (affecting the 1788 list) for free males and for slaves under 12. The land taxes were kept separately in land tax books. The information was taken from deed transfers. The county clerks and the registers of the land patent office sent the information, called alterations, to the commissioners. In the statutes, there are no age or infirmity exemptions from payments of taxes on land or property owned, except on the polls mentioned above, as of 1792. >From 1782 to1787 all taxables were supposed to be listed by name on the schedule. After that, only the responsible taxpayer may be listed. Some counties listed all white tithables.