Gov. Gregoire Proposes New Taxes

This is a good start. Let's hope the Senate and House build on what the governor has proposed.

The only way to make this more regressive would be to tax poverty.

Except for the water tax.

How about a high earners tax instead. Sure it will be challenged in court, but thsi can alwasy be a fall out. Oh wait Dems like to surrender before the fight begins so this is probably the best we can do.

How is taxing soda, candy, and cigarette's regressive? None are essentials, in fact quite the opposite.

Although removing the Federal subsidies for corn (HFCS) and tobacco would be better long term, until that happens I got no problem taxing them to try and counterbalance it. Not to mention you really can't tax cigarette's enough considering the cost to the tax payer ESPECIALLY with the poor.

That said, time for a smoke break.

Fascinating that Gregoire's budget PDF document calls for “a balanced approach” when that's *exactly* the pathetic excuse for a rallying cry which has been used by Fuse (http://fusewashington.org/campaigns/138/future) and the Budget & Policy Center (http://budgetandpolicy.org/), among others in that nexus.

Asking for a balanced approach already gives up any appeal to the morality of maintaining state programs. Maybe that's what we were destined to end up with given the lack of Democratic Party backbone, but it's certainly not what supposedly independent and supposedly progressive organizations should have been asking for. And now Gregoire has adopted *identical* language. (Remember when the budget was a “moral document”?)

Anyway, how charming that they're all working together to put the stamp of moral authority on yet another $1 billion in cuts to critical programs. Who is served by this unsavory confluence of forces aimed towards the November election and not a day later?

The nexus between so-called progressive establishment organizations and the Democratic Party makes them all look terrible, rudderless and utterly without moral clarity.

Time for an income tax please.

Anyone who can afford candy, tobacco and/or bottled water can also afford additional taxes on them.

Yes, an income tax would be a far more appropriate solution – but that's just not going to happen.

Actually, there is an easy way to make this more regressive: don't do it at all. Are you seriously suggesting that the poor would be better off with cheaper cigarettes and bottled water than they would be with Basic Health and financial aid for education? Budget cuts are the most regressive policy that could be considered. No tax system is more regressive than budget cuts.

Actually, sin taxes are better tax policy than an income tax. You can complain about the regressive nature of sales tax, but every one of these taxes is voluntary.

While you enjoy your Top Pot latte and donut with additional tax someone buying that $100,000 candy bar and a drink at the store will pay an additional tax. Guess where the income demographics fall.

These taxes will be very regressive.

I excluded water from my comment.

Yes perhaps the totally destitute will be better off at the expense of the poor. Since the private sector is experiencing extreme unemployment, perhaps across the board pay cuts for all state workers making over $40K would be a better approach.

Whether you like it or not the poor smoke more and if this tax lowers consumption the tax revenue increase won't materialize.

And making money isn't voluntary? Tobacco is an addiction and a candy bar is the smallest of pleasures. If they really thought these taxes would reduce consumption, then they wouldn't think they would increase revenue.

Graduate with Bushnell?

But health care expenditures will so it all balances out…

If the Governor wants to gain support she needs to do one thing. Make sure the taxes are temporary. I mean that there should be an iron clad part of the new tax laws that they will expire on a certain date. If they are still needed the goverment needs to either have the people vote to keep them or re-pass the bill. People are skeptcal of new taxes for a crisis because they tend to stay after the crisis has passed.

And driving cars is bad and they could walk or bike blah, blah, blah but the fact remains that poor people use more of the items taxed proportionally than those better off therefore the tax is regressive.

LET THEM EAT KALE!!! If we had a state income tax, then Turbo Tax wouldn't be free anymore. Now that would be a bummer.

It is possible for one change to have two effects at the same time, surprisingly enough.

Gov G. seems to have a passion for protecting rich people.

Of course, the more you tax the population (in any sense) the more people will have to make, which means a greater gap between demographics, which means local inflation, which means higher cost of living, which means people continually have to make more and businesses will have to charge more, pay more in rent to their landlords, landlords will have to pay more in terms of operating expenses, and the gap continues to widen. Pretty soon, we're Detroit and then what happens? Everything costs money and our local government flat out does not budget or spend well. I'm all about providing services for the needy (particularly the ones who truly need a “helping hand” not a “hand out”, which is a large portion of our population and will only increase as the cost of living increases. There is a needed balance in washington and taxes are not always the key; its like any other business, when times are tough, you cut back or spend wisely, you don't try and increase the burden to an already struggling population which is already struggling. The more it costs these businesses to run the more they will cut back on overhead or increase the cost of their product (similar to how our State has to raise taxes). That will have a much greater impact. Just a though.

“Actually, sin taxes are better tax policy than an income tax. You can complain about the regressive nature of sales tax, but every one of these taxes is voluntary”

I'll second that Tony! Better to discourage consuming garbage (I'm prone to both an occasional soda and cigarette) than discourage earnings.

You really believe that income taxes, at the marginal rates we are talking about, discourage making more money? This comes from the Dori Bushnell Stockman school of economics, right?

Most affected income is at the highest levels which don't result from work, but rather from investments. Is there any evidence that people stop working at the end of the year because they've made too much money?

This tax scheme is to raise revenue not to change behavior. The idea that a poor person enjoying the small pleasure of a candy and a drink in a store will have an additional tax while the better off having a latte and pastry will not, just is wrong.

We really want to eliminate poverty so perhaps we should tax it directly.

Under that logic, a tax on 'grillz' would be a regressive tax. This stuff is a choice, but unlike grillz it's a bad choice, a costly choice, and that cost should be born by those who partake in the activity.

If it makes you feel better, look at it as a down payment for future diabetes and lung cancer treatments.

Taxing those goods is a great idea!

I bet that's how the first talk of a sales tax got started. It's like cancer, it grows out of control. And, everytime there's hiccup in the economy, the answer is to raise taxes….meanwhile people don't have jobs out there. You install a state income taxes people and companies will be looking to leave and won't come back and the state won't be able to attract new business. That's just simple economics and has been proven many times over in many different states. There needs to be a balance. Pay as you go is decent since you can only spend as much as you bring in; it's about time the state government started acting like every other household in this state and working within a budget. People who make less money tend to spend less, that's just common sense. Like everyone voting for the monorail until they realized how much it would cost…..great idea but people always want “someone else” to pay for things. It's about time everyone started taking some responsibility around here. We keep electing people whom have no experience other than pandering to a certain group for the sake of an election but yet they have no idea how to manage, maintain, and monitor growth or lack thereof.

hello! we can't take money back from those at the top who take all the money! LOMG! if we did that, they wouldn't invest in leveraged buyouts which wipe out people's pensions, they wouldn't invest in mortgage hedge fund fiascos which tanked housing and spiralled into millions of unemployed! don't we know that we the peeee-ons are too soft and without catfood pensions, casino retirements, bankrupting health care and wipe out your net worth unemployment, all us peee-ons would get lazy!

hey – let's keep electing Democrats who start the day with right wing talking points !

I would hardly call first generation college students “destitute”. Nor would I classify the dozen's of friends I know who are on Basic Health. You seem to be living in a fantasy world in which there is some class of hard working, cigarette smoking, carbonated beverage drinking citizens that have low enough incomes to be classified as “poor” but not sufficiently low to consume any government services. Unfortunately, said class does not exist. Even if you discover a group of people of “poor” citizen that does not consume any means-tested services, we all consume government services to some degree.

No, making money is not voluntary in the same way cigarettes and candy bars are. In order to acquire the basic necessities for survival (food and shelter), a person has to trade for them in the marketplace. That requires income. Giving up cigarettes to avoid a cigarette tax means overcoming addiction (difficult but doable) and ending up better off than you were before. Giving up income to avoid an income tax means dying of starvation. The two are not comparable.

I did not say that all poor people would give up cigarettes and candy bars, simply that they could. The tax will raise revenue because a large number of individuals (rich, middle class and poor alike) will choose to continue to purchase the goods in question despite the tax. The fact that their choices result in paying higher taxes does not change the fact that their consumption decisions are still choices.

Your comment is a perfect example of someone who has no actual understanding of economics, but likes to pretend that they do after they read some asinine set of libertarian talking points on conservative blog somewhere.

Taxes do not, in general, increase the gap between rich and poor. Far more often than not, they decrease the gap. Local inflation is not caused by local taxes nor is it caused by an increased income gap. The primary cause of Detroit's decline had nothing to do with Michigan's tax policies and no credible theory of economics that suggests that the tax package proposed will in any way increase the likelihood of economic decline in Washington State. Government is not “like any other business”. Government has fundamentally different means and different ends.

You have no credible theory or evidence to suggest that this tax package will “have a much greater [negative] impact” on “an already struggling population which is already struggling” [sic] than spending cuts would.

In short, every assertion of fact or theory in your mindless diatribe is wrong. Fortunately, the people who actually make these decisions are more likely to ground their thinking in reality rather than paranoid fantasies.

Actually, discouraging people from making money is not the primary concern with a state income tax. The primary concern is that the wealthy are highly mobile and that a portion of them will leave the state and take their money with them. Having an investor class in reside locally gives local businesses differential access to capital due to proximity. Zero income tax also attracts entrepreneurs. If you're on the fence between starting a business in Washington or California, the fact that you can keep a larger percent of your profits if you start it in Washington makes the difference for some individuals. Having a higher concentration of entrepreneurs makes the state even more attractive to other entrepreneurs and investors due to economies of agglomeration.

In short, an income tax would make our state less competitive with other states, which will have a serious impact on the economy. A progressive income tax is ideal at the Federal level where the wealthy cannot simply hop across state lines to avoid it. Because a federal income tax applies in all states, no state gain a comparative advantage in attracting investors and entrepreneurs.

We're actually quite lucky that so few other states realize the impact their state income tax systems have. The fact that we have no income tax while so many other states do is what give us an edge.

BTW, there is no Bushnell-Stockman school of economics. This issue has nothing to do with David Stockman's supply-side theories (to which I do not ascribe) nor does it have anything to do with the Pigovian pollution taxes that are the subject of some of James Bushnell's work.

The argument against an income tax (in addition to the fact that it is politically impossible) is state economic competitiveness, not trickle-down. The purpose of the proposed sin taxes is to raise revenue, not optimize consumption. The fact that these taxes are voluntary is a response to the equity concern. It's not that the poor WILL reduce their consumption, but that they COULD if they wanted to.