The intent of House Bill 1556, creating a property tax rebates for primary residences, is laudable but it is a bureaucratic boondoggle, creating an army of 482 state Department of Revenue full-time employees to administer at a cost of $1.325 billion.
Rep. April Berg’s bill is based on the idea of rebating only the state portion of the total taxing districts charges and then only on the first $250,000 of the taxable assessed valuation.
For example, I live within the Snohomish School District and I just looked today at my 2023 property tax statement. The overall tax rate is 8.89 percent while the state portion is 2.23 percent or about 25 percent of the total. The total rebate would amount to 2.23 times $250,000 assessed value, $1,000 or $558 to every homeowner and an equivalent amount to every legal renter.
Left out in the cold are the homeless and those living in shelters, cars, RV’s, etc. who would be ineligible for the proposed rebate that wouldn’t even take effect until the year 2028.
A more humane and efficient system would be for the state to simply mail out quickly annual rebate checks to every Washington man, woman, and child, just like the State of Alaska has been doing for the last 40 years from their oil fund. That was the same principle the Trump administration used when the IRS mailed out economic stimulus checks to every citizen over 18 and which were a godsend during the covid crisis.
HB 1556 is a bad approach and should die in committee and be replaced by a direct rebate to every Washington resident, with no bureaucratic red strings attached.
Morgan Davis
Snohomish
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