Can someone who is a history buff or a native of Virginia help me with this question? My nephew claims that Virginia is not an official state. He swears that it is only a common wealth and not a state. But when I google this it gives the date in history when Virginia became a state. I am totally confused. Please help!!!

Commonwealth is used to refer to some U.S. states, namely, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.


From my search online it is called the Commonwealth of Virginia but it is still a state.

Commonwealth vs. State
Saturday December 9, 2006
I discovered a great answer to the question of why Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts are all officially "commonwealths" and not "states" and the U.S. government site, Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids...
What is a commonwealth vs. state? Is Virginia a state or a commonwealth? How many commonwealth states do we have in the U.S.?

There is no difference between a commonwealth and a state in the U.S. To Locke, Hobbes, and other 17th-century writers the term "commonwealth" meant an organized political community -- what we today call a "state." Officially Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts are all commonwealths. When Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Massachusetts became part of the United States, they merely took the old form of state in their title.

Today, commonwealth also means a political unit having local autonomy but voluntarily united with the U.S. These are Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

I found this.....hope it helps :o)

Very interesting. I've been out of school soooooooooooo long. LOL

The common wealth states have more taxes. We've worked in a few and you not only pay state, but county and city taxes.

The difference is that in the Commonwealth Sates we do not have any mineral rights if any found on our land. We only the "use of the land".
per the google my son just did.

We lived in Michigan and a lot of their cities have city tax.

In Alabama we pay all three and we are not considered common wealth.....just a southern state.