Washington state income tax...the dead horse lawmakers just keep on kicking
Posted by Amber Gunn - June 17, 2009Voters don't want more taxes. They made that crystal clear on April 15.
But Senator Rosa Franklin, the annual sponsor of an income tax bill that has crashed and burned each time it is proposed, is still at it. You've got to give her props for persistence.
Though the legislative session is over and talk of a special session has died down, Senator Franklin is doing her best to keep the issue simmering in voters' minds. Her latest efforts were obliged by the Seattle Times.
In today's guest opinion, Franklin writes:
Like it or not, before long, Washington state will have a state income tax.
It's not going to happen next year, and probably not in the next decade. But it is inevitable, because our state will steadily become unable to function without a structural change in the way we generate revenue.
Actually, an income tax is most certainly NOT inevitable in our state. As EFF's General Counsel Mike Reitz noted last month, a state income tax faces a serious hurdle--mainly, the need for a constitutional amendment.
On the legal question, most income tax proposals would require an amendment to our state constitution. The constitution currently requires that all taxation be “uniform,” and a progressive income tax, where higher incomes are taxed at a higher rate, would violate this uniformity requirement. But constitutional amendments are no walk in the park. The legislature must approve the amendment by a two-thirds vote, and the voters of the state have to ratify the change.
So there's that...
There's also the problem of convincing voters that an income tax would solve all of our state's budget problems in light of states like California, which is shedding jobs and high-income individuals like nobody's business.
But legislators know that if they can make people believe that something is as inevitable as tomorrow's sunrise, while simultaneously soothing them with whispers of "it's for your own good," the opposition might eventually be lulled into defeatism.For now, the opposite seems to be true for income tax supporters. After all, voters have rejected an income tax proposal eight times since 1933. But the seemingly dead horse of an income tax will continue to receive mouth-to-mouth each session, and taxpayers will continue to shoot it.
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