Verenda Smith says Kentucky, Louisiana and Arkansas are in the Southeast, but not West Virginia.
The interim director of the Federation of Tax Administrators says she would use climate, history and economy to define the region. She says Southeastern states have muggy weather, often border the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean and were in the Confederacy.
That last quality would eliminate Kentucky, which did not secede, but Smith argued as a native of the state that it was divided by the Civil War. She would include Louisiana and Arkansas because of their warmer climates and Confederate membership.
"West Virginia is harder because they are geographically different from the rest of the Southeast, up there with Pennsylvania and Ohio," she said. "They don't have the growing seasons and the cotton, and they were on the Union side."
Still, Smith said it's an academic exercise.
"The question has no single answer," she said.
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Re: Tax expert: Ken., La., Ark., but not W. Va.
West Virginia was separated from Virginia at the point of a gun and remained separated due to feelings of the people in the mountains toward maintaining the union. I do believe in recent history, non-binding resolutions in both states were asking about joining the two Virginias back together.