“The Washington State House Finance Committee made revisions to a proposed income tax after a group of progressive lawmakers said the previous version gave away too much while not doing enough for working families.
“A tax break that would have benefited big businesses has been removed from the latest version of a bill to tax incomes more than $1 million is being advanced by Democratic leaders. A group of 13 progressive lawmakers in the House pushed for those provisions to be stripped.”
So no more tax cuts for the rich but also nothing to help the working class? aka nothing has changed? I don’t see that as very “progressive”
Maybe I’m misreading your comment, but that’s not what’s happening here.
This is a new tax bill being proposed, that would add an additional tax on people with incomes over a million dollars, bringing in nearly 4 billion dollars every single year in additional income.
All they did here was remove a provision that would have ended a tax on businesses making over $250m/yr, which would make Washington lose $550m.
So…
Correct, at least the one tax cut that would have otherwise been in this bill.
Incorrect, this money would expand the Working Families Tax Credit (sales tax rebate for people with lower incomes), cut some additional sales taxes (which are regressive taxes) on hygiene products, in favor of this progressive income-based tax, and fund the public school system, healthcare services, and most other services Washington provides.
This is aimed at reducing, and hopefully eventually eliminating, the state’s reliance on regressive taxes like sales taxes, in favor of progressive taxes, like this one, on high income earners.
This is an additional 9.9% tax on incomes over a million dollars that doesn’t exist already. This is $3.7B that would not otherwise be spendable by the Washington government on public services, and it would help to close the budget deficit, which currently would require taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s rainy day fund.
So to wrap that up, what I’m saying here is this is billions of dollars going to public services, as well as removing some regressive parts of the tax system, while now not giving massive tax breaks to corporations.
If this bill doesn’t pass or hadn’t been introduced to begin with, Washington would have cut many public services, kept more regressive taxes, and lost much of its rainy day fund.
Well, happy to be wrong
Upvoting because you simply admitted you were wrong. It’s nice to see some human interaction once in a while.
Sorry for the snarky tone but you should probably read the article fully before making statements like this. There are a number of benefits to children and working class families from this change.