September 1, 2010 • 10:15 am
John Burbank, Executive Director
From the Everett Herald:
Initiative 1098: That’s the one that Bill Gates Sr. has helped to write and promote, even though he is one of the very few people who will see his taxes go up, should this initiative pass. Or better said, he is supporting I-1098 for that very reason. Everyone else, and all businesses, would see their tax bills go down.
Through I-1098, 197 out of 200 taxpayers will see their taxes go down, while just three will pay the initiative’s new income tax on the wealthy. And our state will gain $2 billion for education and health care. How is that possible? Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: state economy, tax and budget , business, I-1098, property tax
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Short Answer: The top 1% of taxpayers in Washington will have an average effective tax rate of 4%. That puts Washington’s ranking for this group of wealthy taxpayers at 27th out of the 44 states (including Washington, D.C.) that tax income.
Households with income below $200,000 will not be affected – and neither will the vast majority of those with adjusted gross income (AGI) between $200,000 and $400,000. That’s because roughly 85% of income tax returns with adjusted gross income above $200,000 are joint returns, and I‐1098’s income tax provisions kick in at $400,000 for couples. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: tax and budget , I-1098, tax reform
August 31, 2010 • 6:30 am
August 27, 2010 • 1:15 pm
By Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, from Huffington Post:
EOI Board Member Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
It’s Women’s Equality Day, the date marked to celebrate women getting the right to vote in our nation 90 years ago today. It’s both hard (and easy in some sad ways) to believe that it was just 90 years ago that women got the right to vote in our nation.
Reflecting on this, I called my grandmother, who turns 95 this year, to see what she recalled about women winning the right to vote, and who had this to say with a twinkle in her voice:
“Well, I wasn’t able to vote when I was 5 years old and women first got the right to vote. Although as a child I thought I should be able to vote, but of course I couldn’t. I had to wait for what felt to me like a very long time to be old enough to vote. I remember when I first voted and going into the polls. I remember that all my girl friends voted too. We all voted. We wanted to take part in what was going on in the world. The only way we could do that was by voting.”
Fast forward 90 years to now in 2010: Women do have the right to vote, we also have a modern economy with women comprising 50% of the entire paid labor force for the first time in history this year, and women now take part in what’s happening in the world in many more ways than appeared possible to my grandmother when she could first vote.
But that doesn’t mean women in our nation have achieved equality yet.
That’s right. It’s not yet time to pop the bubbly and celebrate victory on Women’s Equality Day just yet. There’s one very large group of women in particular who are experiencing significant inequality in our nation: Mothers.
Read more from Huffington Post: Don’t Pop the Bubbly Yet for Women’s Equality Day
Filed under: work and family , women, Women's Equality Day, Glass ceiling, Suffrage
