Since the release of the Wash­ing­ton State Tax Struc­ture Study six­teen years ago, there’s been a lot of talk about fix­ing our upside down tax code, but not much action. Democ­rats in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture hope to change that this ses­sion by tack­ling the prob­lem from two dif­fer­ent approaches.

To make our tax code less regres­sive in the short term, Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors have pro­posed levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains excise tax on the wealthy, fund­ing the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Tax Cred­it, get­ting rid of tax exemp­tions not in the pub­lic inter­est, and cre­at­ing a tax expen­di­ture bud­get… all bills that NPI supports.

Now, to tack­le the prob­lem over the long term, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Noel Frame and Gael Tar­leton (both D‑36th Dis­trict) have intro­duced House Bill 2117. This leg­is­la­tion would cre­ate a task force to set Wash­ing­ton on a path­way to devel­op­ing a cred­i­ble, com­pre­hen­sive, and pol­ished plan to over­haul our unfair tax code.

Frame and Tar­leton each have a deep famil­iar­i­ty with the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing pub­lic finance. Both have served with non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions devot­ed to over­haul­ing Wash­ing­ton’s tax code. Tar­leton is a found­ing board­mem­ber of this orga­ni­za­tion, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and Frame is the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of Pro­gres­sive Major­i­ty Wash­ing­ton, which lat­er became Amplify.

Frame and Tar­leton’s leg­is­la­tion, HB 2117, seeks to “pro­vide a path­way to mod­ern­ize and rebal­ance the Wash­ing­ton state tax struc­ture so that it is equi­table, ade­quate, sta­ble, and trans­par­ent for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State.”

The bil­l’s pre­am­ble tells the sto­ry of how Wash­ing­ton end­ed up with a tax code that requires those with the most to pay the least in tax­es, while those with the least pay the most. It then spec­i­fies that a bipar­ti­san work­group with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the exec­u­tive branch shall be appoint­ed and tasked with devel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive tax reform plan for con­sid­er­a­tion by the 2023 leg­isla­tive session.

Since Wash­ing­ton’s Leg­is­la­ture does­n’t meet year round, ses­sions tend to be dom­i­nat­ed by bud­get­ing and pol­i­cy­mak­ing. There’s just not much time for long term plan­ning or crit­i­cal think­ing about our state’s tough­est, most dif­fi­cult prob­lems. And so those prob­lems go unad­dressed, year after year and bien­ni­um after bien­ni­um. HB 2117 seeks to break this cycle of inaction.

If you read the bill, you’ll see the intent is not to sim­ply autho­rize yet anoth­er study of a well known prob­lem. Rather, it’s to cre­ate a team of lead­ers to devel­op, explore, and exam­ine pos­si­ble solu­tions for fair rev­enue on a set sched­ule. The bill gives the group a set of spe­cif­ic dead­lines by which they must achieve their objectives.

HB 2117 can­not be the extent of what the Leg­is­la­ture does to advance the cause of pro­gres­sive tax reform this ses­sion. But it does rep­re­sent a piece of the puz­zle that has his­tor­i­cal­ly been miss­ing… the long-term plan­ning piece. We’re hap­py to sup­port it. Kudos to Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Frame and Tar­leton for putting it together.