Washingtonians really, really want a capital gains tax to address education funding crisis

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers believe our pub­lic schools are under­fund­ed and strong­ly sup­port rais­ing rev­enue at the state lev­el to address the prob­lem, accord­ing to a new sur­vey con­duct­ed last week by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute.

63% of the like­ly vot­ers who respond­ed to the sur­vey agreed that Wash­ing­ton’s schools need more fund­ing. Impres­sive­ly, 65% sup­port a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to make this hap­pen, with 46% say­ing they “strong­ly sup­port the idea”.

This sur­vey of 679 like­ly Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from June 14th-15th, 2016; all respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line. The poll has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

The spe­cif­ic lan­guage of the school under­fund­ing ques­tion was as follows:

Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree or strong­ly dis­agree with the fol­low­ing state­ment: Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools are under­fund­ed, and we need to raise state rev­enue to ful­ly fund them?

These were the answers:

• Agree: 63%
  • 45% “strong­ly agree” that we need more rev­enue for schools
  • 18% “some­what agree” that we need more rev­enue for schools
• Dis­agree: 32%
  • 18% “some­what dis­agree” that we need more rev­enue for schools
  • 14% “strong­ly dis­agree” that we need more rev­enue for schools
• 6% answered “not sure” 

The spe­cif­ic lan­guage of our cap­i­tal gains tax ques­tion was as follows:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose tax­ing the cap­i­tal gains of wealthy indi­vid­u­als to help pay for pub­lic schools, col­leges and universities?”

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 65%
  • 46% “strong­ly sup­port” a cap­i­tal gains tax
  • 19% “some­what sup­port” a cap­i­tal gains tax
• Oppose: 33%
  • 9% “some­what oppose” a cap­i­tal gains tax
  • 24% “strong­ly oppose” a cap­i­tal gains tax
• 2% answered “not sure” 

Tim Eyman’s wealthy bene­fac­tors may not want a cap­i­tal gains tax, but our research finds that near­ly two-thirds of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers like­ly to vote this Novem­ber do.

Remem­ber, just recent­ly, Eyman told Seat­tle Times colum­nist Dan­ny West­neat he expects to remain rel­e­vant by rid­ing a back­lash to pro­gres­sive tax reform:

“Every­thing I’ve been work­ing on for the past 16 years is com­ing to a head in 2017,” Eyman enthus­es. He cit­ed the Leg­is­la­ture pos­si­bly impos­ing a cap­i­tal-gains tax (Fish­er and a Van­cou­ver, Wash., devel­op­er, Clyde Hol­land, are bankrolling him large­ly to oppose that).

As I’ve writ­ten here pre­vi­ous­ly, pro­gres­sive tax reform is actu­al­ly Eyman’s worst night­mare. It could be ben­e­fi­cial to his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry in the short term if it spurs peo­ple like Hol­land and Fish­er to write checks to fund anoth­er lucra­tive sig­na­ture dri­ve, but long term, it won’t be — and Eyman knows it.

Case in point: Ten years ago, Eyman friend Den­nis Falk qual­i­fied an ini­tia­tive to the bal­lot to repeal Wash­ing­ton’s estate tax, which is one of the most pro­gres­sive tax­es the state has (it’s only paid by wealthy fam­i­lies). Though the Seat­tle Times cam­paigned relent­less­ly for its pas­sage, vot­ers reject­ed the ini­tia­tive over­whelm­ing­ly, and the estate tax remains in place. It is still being col­lect­ed today.

If the Leg­is­la­ture levies a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy, and Eyman (or any­one else) man­ages to force a vote on that leg­is­la­tion, our research sug­gests that vot­ers stand ready to enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorse the new rev­enue and reject any attempt by the right wing to repeal it. Hol­land and Fish­er would be bet­ter served not wast­ing their mon­ey try­ing to over­turn pro­gres­sive tax reform that the peo­ple want.

A cap­i­tal gains tax that funds edu­ca­tion is clear­ly an idea that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans strong­ly sup­port. The num­bers above show it’s wild­ly popular.

We’ve now asked this same ques­tion two years in a row, and each time, the num­ber of vot­ers who have said they “strong­ly sup­port” a cap­i­tal gains tax has been in the for­ties, while the over­all fig­ure has jumped from the fifties into the sixties.

We antic­i­pat­ed that we might see such a jump, giv­en that pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years have the high­est par­tic­i­pa­tion and the most pro­gres­sive electorates.

Last year, ana­lyz­ing the results of the iden­ti­cal­ly-word­ed cap­i­tal gains tax ques­tion, I wrote: “As this was a poll of like­ly 2015 vot­ers, we believe it actu­al­ly under­states the true lev­el of sup­port for a cap­i­tal gains tax among next year’s elec­torate, which is pro­ject­ed to be sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er than this year’s.”

Our 2016 research con­firms this guess. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans real­ly, real­ly want a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to fund our pub­lic schools.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, are you lis­ten­ing? The peo­ple of our great state want new rev­enue to ensure that we have great pub­lic schools, col­leges, and uni­ver­si­ties. Our sur­vey finds that sup­port for a cap­i­tal gains tax is over­whelm­ing. Vot­ers in every region of the state want this, not just vot­ers in urban King Coun­ty. It’s time to stop tweet­ing out mis­lead­ing charts and make a com­mit­ment to meet our state’s para­mount duty — amply pro­vid­ing for the edu­ca­tion of all Wash­ing­ton’s children.