Tim Eyman’s I-1033 purports to help property owners pay property taxes. A big question of course is who should we help. Should we help everyone pay their property taxes – like people who own a second home and/or corporations like Boeing that owns property?
Or should we help those that need help most – like senior citizens on fixed incomes or struggling working families trying to make end meet that have a principal residence they live in.
Eyman’s I-1033 says we should help everyone including businesses and corporate property owners and shopping malls like Kemper Freeman’s Bellevue Square and real estate developer’s and homeowners with second homes and vacation homes. I-1033 says that should be the top priority of any tax dollars that come into the state and city and county as new revenue above this year’s recession baseline set by Eyman becomes available as the recession ends.
This one and only use of these tax dollars now becomes a function of government – to support a transfer of tax dollars collected from everyone and used to then benefit property owners only.
Renters and senior citizens and working families that own no property will continue to pay taxes under Initiative 1033 and will get no property tax rebate or see any new services. This will further increase unfairness in our tax code and institute a reverse Robin Hood program of taxing lower income people and giving it to higher income people in the form of reduced property taxes.
Eyman is trying to institute a scare campaign for property owners about how their taxes are out of control.
Yet this isn’t the case. The Tax Foundation says that in terms of property taxes paid per capita in this state we rank 25th (with one being the highest)out of the 50 states. We also rank 8th in terms of income per capita. Overall our total state and local tax burden ranks us 35th (with 1 being the highest) out of 50 states.
If it’s seniors we want to help, the best solution is to raise the senior property tax exemption and help those most in need. You can click here to read more about the Senior Property Tax Exemption which also covers disabled people.
Or if you’re concerned about people being taxed out of their homes then you should be supporting a Homestead Exemption like some 38 other states have.
Eyman says this can’t be done because you have to tax commercial and residential property equally. This isn’t strictly true because the senior exception is a form of a Homestead Exemption that legal and exists because the Legislative can make exemptions to the uniformity issue.
But even considering the uniformity issue it’s easy to treat both commercial and residential real estate the same by just providing the same exemption for business and homeowners. HB 3162 did just that in the 2007-2008 Legislative session. It had 24 sponsors. HB 3162 was labeled “Providing a property tax exemption for the first $50,000 of assessed value of commercial and residential real property.”
Such a simple answer, helping both home owner’s not being taxed out of their principal residence and also helping small businesses with their principal business location. Equal and fair. Reasonable.
I-1033 IS INSTEAD A WEALTH TRANSFER SCHEME TRANSFERRING SALES TAXES AND OTHER REVENUE TO HELP LARGE PROPERTY OWNERS PAY LESS TAXES. The state says it will total almost $9 billion over 5 years.
Strange how helping large corporations pay their property taxes is more important than helping kids go to college or paying teachers a decent wage or keeping our libraries and parks open for the public or hiring more police or helping seniors stay in their homes because this is the choice in a nutshell.
I-1033 rather than just trying to reduce property taxes directly for those that need help, instead provides a special tax break that mainly benefits large property owners. It would transfer huge amounts of tax dollars that would have been collected from everyone to support public services like health care and Medicaid and parks and transit and sidewalks to do this. It’s a crazy scheme that is ridiculous in it’s implementation and absurdly complex.
I-1033 is a complex measure and will result in a huge change in our present tax structure. It will further erode fairness and deprive our state of needed investments in our community. It provides a special property tax exemption that benefits the wealthy at the expense of those less fortunate.
Vote No on Initiative 1033. Keep Tim’s selfish and greedy hands out of our pockets. Tell Tim NO DEAL. JUST VOTE NO ON INITIATIVE 1033 THIS NOVEMBER 3, 2009!
