More income tax proposals

Olympia is searching for new cash sources to fuel their spending habits. The politicians claim every one of the proposed taxes is "fair" or "more fair." More fair than letting us keep the money we've earned, I suppose.

Here we go:

SB 6548 imposes an income tax on "high earners" (later to be expanded to everyone). The stated purpose is to fund education.

HB 2766 imposes an excise tax on the receipt of adjusted gross
income above one million dollars. The concept of defining personal income as sales proceeds is identical to the initiative 1098, turned down by the voters in 2010.

HB 2486 is a monster tax package. It introduces something called the "Corporate Privilege Tax", combined with a personal income tax. The stated purpose is provide for education.
Backers claim sales tax and property tax would be reduced -- thus reducing overall revenues to the state $7,487,420,000 over an 8 year period.

SB 6550 is the Senate version of HB 2486, and is nearly identical.


HB 2744 would replace the business and occupation tax with a flat rate tax on corporate net income. The present business and occupation tax is based on gross business income.

SB 6495 would be a massive personal income tax of $71,666,712,000 over 8 years (the projection runs out that far, but the tax would go on until modified). Backers claim sales tax and property tax would be reduced, reducing the overall tax increase.

HB 2563 - A special category of income tax is capital gains tax. HB 2563 proposes to tax capital gains income at 5%. This state tax is in addition to the federal capital gains tax, currently 15% or 35%, depending on term. See Wikipedia for more on this tax.

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Proponents of capital gains tax always insist taxing capital is "more fair." They insist no one works for capital gains - vile calumny. A person who risks his savings by investing, and thus building the economy, is going to sweat, doing a kind of work no tax-crazed politician will ever understand.

A capital gains tax actually reduces capital available to fuel growth, and thus jobs. Leftist politicians desire to control the people's chance to work, and therefore lust over private capital gains. These politicians are aware of the misery they can cause with their excessive taxation, but they don't care.

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The sales tax and other so called "regressive" in Washington State probably helped moderate some of the impact of the current depression. Sales taxes are applied to consumption, which inhibits waste.

Income tax and other so-called "progressive" taxes tax production. A depression like the current one is a drop in production, which had the nasty side effect of making workers unusable. If the state was taxing income from the remaining productive companies, those companies (and their workers) would have faced a dangerous and unfair burden to their future employment.

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The best solution to Olympia's current funding problems is to make the tough choices and reduce state spending.