From the Everett Herald:
John Burbank, Executive Director
This past month I flew back to Vermont, where my dad lives. He is 91 years old now, and just broke his hip. So he has a long recovery in front of him, and I was there to help him along and bolster his spirits when he needed some encouragement.
My dad is in a rehabilitation center, where he is learning to “hop” on a walker, and not put any weight on the bad leg. He gets tired, but he perseveres, and he is making progress. He maintains an enthusiasm and interest in life, athletics, politics, and his family and friends. I got him a Kindle, but I am not sure he has figured that out yet!
Without the great professional staff at his rehabilitation center, the physical therapists, the nursing assistants who make sure he is comfortable, and the nurses who look after him, my Dad would not be making progress every day. Without the EMTs who got him to the hospital, the specialist who replaced his hip, and the other doctors who supervise his care and progress, my Dad would not be alive now. Without Medicare, the medical bills would have started to pile up.
Let’s put this another way: My Dad wouldn’t have had much of a chance if we actually took U.S. Senate candidate Clint Didier’s advice: “We’ve got to get rid of this protecting the weak.” Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: EOI , taxes, health care, government
From In These Times:
As the planet’s economy keeps stumbling, the phrase “worst recession since the Great Depression” has become the new “global war on terror” — a term whose overuse has rendered it both meaningless and acronym-worthy. And just like that previously ubiquitous phrase, references to the WRSTGD are almost always followed by flimsy and contradictory explanations.
Republicans who ran up massive deficits say the recession comes from overspending. Democrats who gutted the job market with free trade policies nonetheless insist it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. Meanwhile, pundits who cheered both sides now offer non-sequiturs, blaming excessive partisanship for our problems.
But as history (and Freakonomics) teaches, such oversimplified memes tend to obscure the counterintuitive notions that often hold the most profound truths. And in the case of the WRSTGD, the most important of these is the idea that we are in economic dire straits because tax rates are too low. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: tax and budget , recession, taxes
In a couple of days, the Yes on 1098 campaign will turn in somewhere north of 360,000 signatures for Initiative 1098 — far more than enough to qualify for the ballot — and the campaigns for and against the measure will begin to heat up. Opponents of I-1098 claim the measure will excessively impact businesses, but they’ve overlooked an important fact in their rush to condemn it.
Since I-1098 proposes a modest tax on adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200K for individuals or $400K for joint filers, it neither favors nor punishes businesses — or any other income source for that matter. Whether received from daily wages, winning the lottery, or taking a share of a corporation’s profits, the same rates and thresholds apply to all.
Washington’s current business tax (the Business and Occupation, or “B&O” tax), on the other hand, is a different story. Since B&O taxes are levied on gross receipts — before expenses, before depreciation, etc. — businesses pay tax regardless of whether they turn a profit. Moreover, small and medium businesses pay a disproportionately high share of their income in business taxes.
I-1098 addresses those issues in two different ways: Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: tax and budget , business, I-1098, income tax, revenue, taxes
Initiative 1098 will lower property taxes on residential and commercial property owners, exempt 81% of Washington small businesses from B&O taxes, and reduce the B&O rate for another 12% of businesses. It will offset the revenue reductions with a tax on high incomes (5% on income above $200K/individual or $400K/joint, and 9% on income above $500K/individual or $1 million/joint).
Because the tax will only apply to income over the threshold, we must calculate the effective tax rate in order to understand what percentage of income is actually paid in tax. The effective tax rate is found by subtracting the exempt amount from total income, and multiplying the remainder by its corresponding marginal tax rate. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: tax and budget , budget, economic security, economy, I-1098, income, income tax, middle class, taxes
