GUEST POST: R.I.P. Washington State’s Regressive Tax Code
If some brave soul has the courage to put a stake through the heart of Washington’s regressive tax code this Halloween, we’ll remember it this way.
Like most tragic monsters, Washington state’s regressive tax code was inadvertently spawned through the best of intentions. In 1933, a Depression-weary electorate overwhelmingly passed a statewide income tax to ensure prosperity and economic growth for all Washington’s residents. The State Supreme Court then stepped in, and proceeded to trample the will of the people.
Instead of agreeing that the grandparents of today’s billionaire class should just pay their fucking taxes, the court ruled in favor of a wholesale ban on income tax — a decision that has now been haunting Washington taxpayers for nearly one hundred years. Since that fateful day, Washington has been cursed with the truly terrifying honor of having the most unfair state and local tax system in the country. Residents with the lowest incomes pay seven times more in state and local taxes as a share of their income than the richest one percent — a bone-chilling ratio sure to curdle all but the richest of bluebloods.
The tax code had a sheltered childhood, coming of age in the late 50s and early 60s, where it grew more conservative as it was coddled by the wealthy elite. By the 1970s, property tax restrictions and limits on school levies cemented its reputation as serving wealthy white suburban families while leaving behind Black, indigenous, and other Washington communities of color. Put plainly, the tax code spent its awkward teen years becoming a racist monster responsible for exacerbating the inequities already present in Washington state.
Like so many middle-aged white folks, in the late 1990s the tax code indulged its midlife crisis by having an affair with a stunningly overconfident mediocre white guy: anti-tax crusader Tim Eyman. Their ghastly courtship began with what some thought was a one-night stand: Eyman led a repeal of the motor vehicle excise tax in 1999. But their passion blossomed and, in 2001, they unleashed a love child upon the world: I-747. The I-747 ballot measure limited state and local tax levies to a maximum of one percent per year, draining the state budget dry like a vampire. Things took a dangerous turn when Eyman embezzled money to fund his not-so-secret liaison, illegally appropriating campaign funds to enrich himself.
Washington’s richest residents and biggest, most profitable corporations have done everything in their power to keep the loophole-ridden tax code alive. Lobbyists provided life support for the tax code by advocating for tax breaks by the billions for aerospace manufacturers and forcing low-income folks to foot the bill.
Big corporations hooked the tax code to oxygen, pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to defeat a state income tax on high-earners in 2010. They managed to convince voters that the richest one percent of Washingtonians deserved a tax break, keeping the tax code shambling on for another two decades like a sad Frankenstein’s monster of regressive policy.
But this year working families, mom and pop businesses, immigrants, single moms, and poor families put the stake in this monster’s rotting chest with a capital gains tax that represented Washington’s strongest sign of progress toward tax fairness in decades. Soon after, the ghoulish tryst between Eyman and the tax code became even more macabre when State Rep. Jim Walsh made it a love triangle. This throuple are even now attempting to repeal the tax at the ballot box and through the courts.
The regressive tax code will be remembered most fondly by those space-faring, tax-dodging, worker-exploiting billionaires who most benefited from it. The rest of us are exhilarated to see the rich finally just fucking pay what they owe.
Washington’s tax code is survived by other regressive policies, including for-profit private healthcare, single-family zoning, REAL IDs, discriminatory rental housing, and a whole coven of other monstrous trickle-down cousins.
Rest in peace, regressive tax code. Please don’t rise from the grave to haunt us this Halloween — or ever.
