This week on The Impact we have a revenue and tax focused review of the 2024 session with a panel interview featuring Traci Underwood, interim Co-Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute and Paul Guppy, Vice President for Research with the Washington Policy Center.
“The ultra-wealthy, you know, continue to pay a much less percentage of their income in taxes here, subsidized by, you know, poor and middle class folks. And I think that tapping into that like we did with the cap gains tax, which, you know, ended up bringing in more revenue than we even anticipated. We’re hoping to continue that and then something like a wealth tax that would tax stocks and bonds, financial assets, on a yearly basis,” said Underwood.
“It’s clear that there’s a strong political group in the state that has wanted a state income tax for decades. They continually keep putting it on the ballot and it keeps fails. It keeps failing. So now they create this capital gains tax. It went through the courts. They labeled as an excise tax to get it past our constitution, again, kind of sending sort of a phony signal to the public that they’re not labeling it accurately. And then it brings in— they’re delighted when it brings in so much more money. So again, there’s this attitude of how can we get more?” said Guppy.
“I think that would be a terrible mistake to eliminate the capital gains tax. I think that it I think it’s a common misconception that it’s a gateway tax to anything. It’s just a way to, again, balance that very unfair tax code that I’ve been talking about. You know, we have to start to increase taxes for the most wealthy in our state so that that balances out so that they’re not paying fractions of a percent on their income versus the poorest in our state who are paying upwards of 18% of their income on taxes,” said Underwood.
“There are things that government does: public safety, roads, education, the sort of obvious things, but there is no defining limit as to what that is. When you get up to a point of where up to 40% of an average income is being paid for taxes at all levels, people begin to say, well, when do I get to keep some more of my own money? Government only is not really the answer that people want. What people want are more affordable options in the private sector so they can take their own money and make their own choices,” said Guppy.
Watch the full interview here and join us next week for more in depth interviews you won’t find anywhere else!
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