I have submitted criticisms of Herald columnist John Burbank’s ideas several times. This letter is to support and expand his ideas in his May 17 column, where he points out the gross regressiveness of the Washington state tax system, the worst in the nation.
The right-wing will quibble about Mr. Burbank’s numbers because the income of some poor families may not account for some of their income such as EIC and SNAP. However, this does not change the basic regressiveness of our tax system. High-income families also get breaks such as tax-free retirement savings and the mortgage-interest tax deduction. (Note that in the long run the mortgage-interest deduction only benefits builders and real-estate agents because it drives home prices higher.)
We had the opportunity to mitigate this through the I-1098 income tax initiative in 2010. However, this initiative was defeated largely by negative and false ads paid for by a few billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Ballmer.
I-1098 was flawed in that it would have lowered property taxes, which does not directly benefit poor people. A better approach would be to eliminate or at least significantly reduce the sales tax and replace it with an income tax. This would be true tax reform.
If Washingtonians want a fair and equitable tax system they need to get over their irrational and emotional opposition to an income tax, which is fed by the high-income group that is laughing all the way to the bank because they are taxed at a significantly lower rate than poor people.
Jerry Fraser
Snohomish
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