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For its entire history, Washington has had no personal income tax. Voters have rejected an income tax eleven times, twice through initiatives declaring they don't want one. The state constitution states that income is property, and all property must be taxed uniformly.
Until now. This legislative session, the state legislature passed a tax that they called the "Millionaires Tax," supposedly applying a 9.9% rate to all income over one million. What it really entails is a full income tax with a $1 million "exemption" for each household, not individual taxpayers. (Marriage penalty, is that you?) The perverse bill had some very ugly clauses, including a thoroughly comprehensive definition of "resident" to ensure that no one can move out of state while retaining ties such as bank accounts or second homes to avoid the tax. People involved with non-profit charities were of the opinion that the wealthy who leave the state to avoid the tax would have to quit donating to local charities to avoid being considered a resident. And the most perverse, they listed every single public-employee retirement fund by name, and specifically stated that withdrawals by retirees would be "subject to the tax". There are dozens of such funds for different classes of state employees, and every single one was listed in the bill. Please also note that this session, the legislature raided some law enforcement employees' retirement funds to pay for current expenses.
Also perverse: The legislature applied an emergency clause to the bill, forbidding a citizen referendum vote. The tax will not be collected until 2029, for the 2028 tax year, but they still applied that emergency to it. Our legislature hates the people.
The largest constituency for the tax was public employee unions, who poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the NO campaign on the initiative to repeal the tax. That initiative failed tonight, and that was the last chance the people will have to stop the state from taxing their income. The legislators who passed the tax were quite blatant in stating, publicly and for the record, that the exemption would be lowered in short order. Soon everyone will pay an income tax.
Since there is a constitutional question at hand, the bill will certainly be put before the Washington Supreme Court in the coming year. This cycle there were five Supreme Court Justice positions on the ballot — four slots that had appointees of the current Democratic governor, and one that was a regular election. The governor's four appointees were his former law partners. It looks like all five conservative challengers lost tonight, so the Supreme Court is now entirely in leftist hands.
Washington State's lack of an income tax was a huge economic plus. It's no accident that many tech companies started here or moved in from elsewhere. That advantage has now been lost. And our free-spending legislature is already driving companies large and small out of the state, and sometimes out of business. Our feckless governor thinks the tax will have no such effect. There are a great many unhappy Washingtonians tonight.
I wrote about the state of our economy:
Discussion (5)
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Get the hell out of that state!
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What will Bill Gates do?
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Government that consists of anything but actual public goods ends up being evil every single time. Public goods are the things that are silly to privatize. Non-public goods are these unmanageable, crazy things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, and welfare, etc.
Then you have inflation. Everything should be deflating because trade and automation always lower prices. But no, we have these geniuses that think we need inflation. So they run over all of the lower prices with printed money. Then nobody can afford anything. Then the government runs out of money. Then everybody whines about populism and socialism.
Inflation is force. Non-public goods produced by the government is force. All of this force begets more force.
It's patently stupid, but nobody can see it.
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It always starts with the a modest tax on richest people and trickles down to the middle class. The original income tax was only 1% and only applied to the top 1%. Look at where that went.
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Oh, there will be no "trickle down" here. My "representative" who lives part time in my neighborhood is prominent in stating that the goal is an income tax on all citizens and all income, including Social Security and pensions. The legislature is also quickly handing over much state land to the Indian tribes, thus taking that land out of the tax base. With lower tax revenue, they will have to raise taxes on those who are left.