{"id":399556,"date":"2010-03-05T18:10:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T23:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011269519_taxtalkincomewaterandfaith.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-05T18:10:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T23:10:29","slug":"tax-talk-income-water-and-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/399556","title":{"rendered":"Tax talk: income, water and faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Income tax would discriminate against wealthy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The proposed income-tax scheme is both insidious and immoral [\u201cAdd income tax on wealthy to cut sales tax for everyone?\u201d page one, March 5].<\/p>\n

It\u2019s insidious because it takes the \u201csafety\u201d off the tax \u201cgun,\u201d thereby opening Pandora\u2019s box to virtually unchecked spending. Governments at all levels are necessary evils that are kept in check only by tax starvation. Less government is the best government.<\/p>\n

The tax proposal is immoral because it uses the state to discriminate and extort from the wealthy. And no matter how you try to justify it, extortion is theft because wealth is ultimately taken by coercion and force. This is essentially \u201cproxy theft,\u201d whereby voter greed uses the state as a thief to benefit \u2014 directly or indirectly \u2014 pocket books. And theft \u2014 proxy or otherwise \u2014 is both sinful and immoral.<\/p>\n

And, lest one tries to discredit this rationale by flinging the word \u201ccompassion\u201d about, let me remind folks that only individuals can be compassionate, not collectives. In other words, you have to use your own bucks \u2014 and not the bucks of others \u2014 in order to be truly compassionate.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Gerald J. Stiles, Sequim<\/em><\/p>\n

Current system unfairly targets lower and middle classes<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m so glad the media and legislators are finally listening to what the public has been saying on this issue [income tax].<\/p>\n

Lower-income people pay a much higher share of their income under the current system that relies on sales tax. In order to help middle-income people, lawmakers should go even further \u2014 with higher rates of taxation on the super rich and reduction of property taxes on homes.<\/p>\n

Finally things are starting to move in the right direction!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Helen Gilbert, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n

Give \u2018em a sales-tax break<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the Legislature continues to drag its feet on proposing a high-income tax \u2014 one of the most fair taxes for our state\u2019s residents \u2014 then how about a sales-tax holiday one weekend in August for back-to-school necessity shopping?<\/p>\n

Other states without an income tax do this because they know families with children pay the most in sales tax as a percentage of their income. Back-to-school supplies and clothes are heavily taxed and are thus grossly unfair to lower- and middle-income families.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m asking the Legislature to get to work and fix this budget crisis without continuing to hurt Washington\u2019s working families.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Patricia Betz, Mill Creek<\/em><\/p>\n

Taxing \u2018God\u2019s gift\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t we just tax God\u2019s gift to man? That is what Gov. Chris Gregoire is proposing in taxing water without even thinking about the whole concept of drinking-water usage at all [\u201cHouse Dems don\u2019t go for increase in sales tax,\u201d NWTuesday, March 2]. It is the one thing that helps man survive in all kinds of daily exposures by flushing out toxins.<\/p>\n

There is nothing more important to the human body than water intake. Many people are not around a faucet 24 hours a day and bottled water is a way of keeping all of us out of medical facilities and keeping healthy on a daily basis. Nursing homes pass out bottled water on day trips. Ever gone on a walk without bottled water to help with dehydration?<\/p>\n

The best way of catching up with your daily intake is to have that bottled water available while in the car and eating a snack during lunch break. And what about those who send their children to school and put water in their lunchbox? Or those who just drink bottled water due to bad well water?<\/p>\n

The fact is, it will make it too expensive for many budgets with the penny-an-ounce tax.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Gary Davidson, Bellingham<\/em><\/p>\n

Providing for community done in good faith<\/strong><\/p>\n

People of all faiths are concerned for the common good in Washington state. We, as religious leaders in this state, believe that the people we have elected to represent us also want the best for people who live in this state.<\/p>\n

We recognize the difficulty of balancing the budget with the significant shortfall caused by our great national recession \u2014 for the second year in a row. Many of the people in our faith communities are facing the same challenges. We understand that our state budget is more than just a list of accounts and expenditures; it is a document that lays out our values and priorities for how we best serve the common good.<\/p>\n

As we enter the last few days of this legislative session \u2014 and the Legislature\u2019s primary task is putting together a final budget for the governor \u2014 we support as substantial a revenue package as possible to alleviate the cuts and eliminations of critical programs and services. We support doing this in these difficult economic times because the human toil of the proposed cuts \u2014 on top of last year\u2019s almost $4 billion \u2014 will be devastating.<\/p>\n

The alternative will increase the devastation of the poor and vulnerable of our state.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Rev. Gregory H. Rickel, Olympia, & Rev. Michael Denton, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Income tax would discriminate against wealthy The proposed income-tax scheme is both insidious and immoral [\u201cAdd income tax on wealthy to cut sales tax for everyone?\u201d page one, March 5]. It\u2019s insidious because it takes the \u201csafety\u201d off the tax \u201cgun,\u201d thereby opening Pandora\u2019s box to virtually unchecked spending. Governments at all levels are necessary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}