The Seattle Times has an opinion piece* claiming “Washington Legislature should get serious about budget solutions.” Then they proceed to act like spoiled assholes.
THE value of the two-thirds requirement to pass a tax bill is amply demonstrated by most of the revenue bills offered in Olympia.
The value of writing in the active voice has never been demonstrated by The Seattle Times.
There are a few exceptions. Being heard Wednesday is Senate Bill 5947, sponsored by Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way. This would repeal the sales-tax exemption for bull semen and fuel for heating chicken coops. We have been hearing Democrats talk for years about these breaks as if they were big and important. The Republicans should do the gracious thing and vote yes. The bill, however, raises only $5 million a year, which is about two ten-thousandths of the state budget.
The Republicans won’t. Because they fuck bulls and are worried about having to pay taxes. There, I said it. Prove me wrong, Republicans, but as long as you vote against this tax hike that even The Seattle Times supports, that must be why.
Anyway, The Seattle Times calls in their headline for the Leg to “get serious” and then throws out a misleading number. Who cares what percent of the budget we’re dealing with? Tell us the percent of the budget hole. That, while still a small amount, comes to much more (the special session is to fill the budget hole, after all).
Also being heard is SB 5945, sponsored by Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island. It raises $245 million a year. But it raises all preferential rates of the business-and-occupation tax by 25 percent, whether the preferences make sense or not. It wipes out a preference for first mortgages. This bill raises 50 times more revenue than the first one, and is much more difficult to justify.
A serious discussion demands that we reinflate the housing bubble while we cut Basic Health, K-12 Education, and Higher Ed. Anyway, they go on, with the same nonsense mentioning a proposed tax increase and then saying something stupid. Why call for a serious discussion and then not even try for seriousness?
* Or, they had an opinion piece last Tuesday, remember the last time I wrote about their ed board and said they were slow on the Internet? Me either.
A serious discussion of tax loopholes for niche industries would also have to include the sales tax exemption and several other cushy breaks for print newspapers. That’s a discussion the Times would like to avoid at all costs, since the last thing our state’s newspaper industry can claim to be doing these days is creating jobs.
Ever notice that the people who most loudly champion the virtues of the free market (for everyone else) are usually the same people who tend to benefit most from corporate welfare?
Interesting how the Republican Times singles out a tiny tax loophole they claim “Democrats talk … about … as if they were big and important” when everyone who isn’t brain-dead knows it’s the GOP who festoons tax laws with special breaks for special interests (see, e.g., RT’s exemption from the newspaper tax) like ornaments on a Christmas Tree. After all, how many Democrats own businesses that benefit from these tax breaks? (You can count ’em on your toes.)
Anyone out there still believe the Times is an impartial newspaper practicing objective journalism? It’s nothing but the WSRP newsletter.
EVERY discussion of “tax loopholes” in my lifetimes (40+ years) has always followed the meme of “fix the loopholes, except the ones that benefit me!”.
Same with all issue of ‘big government’. We need to STOP spending of course (unless it’s subsidies for corn/cotton farmers, subsidies for Exxon, no bid contracts for Haliburton, junk/unwanted defense contracts, tax shelters for millionaires, tax code written specifically for individual industry BY their lobbyists, etc, etc, etc). Stop big government is “code” for “only give ME money”. It’s been that way forever.
@4 Yeah, we need to get away from socialist capitalism and return to the old-fashioned values of succeeding in business by selling better products at lower prices in a competitive marketplace. You have to be pretty old to remember when we had such a system.
@4
Exactly.
Fixing tax loopholes and ending corporate welfare is simply a matter of enacting a single, falt-rate income tax at the federal level, for both individuals and corporations. No more progressive rates, no more volumes and vilumes of tax rules and regulations. No more tax preparation industry.
Just enact a flat-rate tax and be done with it.
# 7: Nope, because the flat rate would be too high for those in the lower income ranges, it would be a morally and politically unacceptable burden on them. Which is what the rich are counting on any time they propose it: they know that if a flat rate is adopted, it wouldn’t be an “average” of the existing rates, it would be the lowest rate which is slightly above zero – perhaps 5%. And that wouldn’t bring in enough money to pay for even a small fraction of our defense budget alone, even forgetting everything else. Knowing that this is unworkable, offering it just a red herring, meant to move the discussion away from how little the rich are currently paying.
Which brings us to the second point – exactly what is income, and how is it counted? Lots of very rich people actually have very little “reportable” income through a variety of devices.
For example, business owners manage to get lots of what would otherwise be personal expenses deducted as business expenses or “employee perks” of the family corporation. Cars, airplanes, meals, travel, lodging, servants, etc. can all, with care and professional advice, become deductable expenses. Leona Helmsly got into trouble by being overly agressive on this (against the advice of her accounants) and making the mistake of uttering “Only poor people pay taxes, the rich never do” in the presence of her servants.
The other most common scenario is simply to accumulate assets and never sell them. Stock prices can appreciate many times over, but most can live on the divideds without touching the principle, or even selling small portions at the capital gains tax rate – I think the rate is 15%. Since it isn’t subjet to social security or medicare taxes, it’s actually a great tax deal, the average middle-class workman pays higher combined rates than these rich do. Even these relatively nominal taxes can be avoided by up to 50% by making charitable donations (more on that below).
Then there’s the big tax-avoidance scheme. If a person sells a capital asset they have to pay tax on the appreciation in value – the difference between the “basis” (purchase price plus improvements, etc.), and the price recieved upon the sale.
But if they never sell the assett, they never pay the tax. But they CAN give an assett (or portion thereof) as a charitable donation. The donar doesn’t have to pay a tax on the transfer, but if they give it to charity they get to take a deduction for the CURRENT MARKET VALUE of the donation. The donee doesn’t pay tax on the appreciation either – they take it on a “stepped-up basis”, meaning that they also take it with the basis being the current market value as of the time of the donation. Which is why you see rich people donating to museums, and market prices for paintings and artwork going up so much – their donations offset their tax on dividends and capital gains.
But what happens when they die? Well if there is an inheritance tax, and if the estate is big enough, the tax finally has to be paid by the estate. Except the exemption amount is quite high (I forget the numbers right now), and there actually isn’t an estate tax right now, thanks to the Republicans. Which is why the rich are pretty much guaranteed to continue to get richer at a pace which far exceeds our ability to compete with them on any level.