I-1098 cuts taxes for most, funds schools, health care

Initiative 1098, now being actively circulated for signatures, would provide tax cuts for most Washingtonians, create jobs and provide dedicated funding for quality schools and health care. The measure would materially improve the fairness of the state’s notoriously regressive tax system for the first time since food was exempted from the sales tax in 1987.

For homeowners, the initiative would roll back the state’s share of the property tax by 20%. About 375,000 of the state’s smallest businesses would be exempted from the business and occupation tax, enabling many businesses to add workers.

By placing a modest tax on incomes above $200,000 for individuals and above $400,000 for couples – about 3% of households in all -- I-1098 would raise enough new revenue both to provide the tax cuts and to ease the state’s ongoing budget crisis by an estimated $1 billion.

Seventy percent of this net new revenue would be earmarked for education and 30% for health care. The initiative requires regular reporting on how the revenues are spent. Future changes in the income tax could not be approved without a vote of the people.

The initiative is the work of a coalition of respected business, labor and community leaders like Bill Gates Sr., who support a careful, balanced reform of our state’s tax system intended to benefit the middle class and strengthen small business. I-1098 has been endorsed by the Main Street Alliance, an organization of 2,000 of the state’s small businesses, and by the Rebuilding Our Economic Future Coalition. The Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans is one of the coalition’s 130 affiliated organizations.

The campaign has set a target of 325,000 signatures by the July 2 filing deadline. The PSARA Executive Board immediately endorsed the measure and launched its own signature-getting campaign. Petition forms have been sent to every member, with a covering letter explaining the urgency of getting the measure on the November 2 ballot.

The measure is essentially the same as Initiative 1070, reported on in the May Retiree Advocate. The number was changed to I-1098 owing to last-minute changes in the wording of its title.