- I'm working on getting a .doc version of this.
- We now get to review this draft and make comments or revisions, and we have to do this before our next meeting on Oct 7! We must file a final version by October 2, at which point it goes to the Secretary of State to get a ballot title, summary, number, etc.
- Remember that this is just a test run, so we don't have to set everything in stone right now. Having said that, it would be good to take advantage of this opportunity to revise the text, so here are some questions I have... please add your own in the comments section or via email!
- Question #1 is about the definition in section 10(3): "Low income means household income that is at or below one hundred twenty-five percent of the federally established poverty level." This language came from an unrelated piece of state legislation, and I don't know whether or not it's appropriate for our purposes.
- Questions #2 and #3 are in a similar vein: Question #2 is about the part of section 4(1) that property owners are not eligible for the low-income sales tax credit: Is this a good idea or not? Question #3 is whether it's worth looking into a declining-credit structure so that there's not a precipitous drop-off, e.g., with someone receiving the full credit if their income is $x and receiving zero credit if their income is one dollar more than that?
- Question #4 is about section 10(1), which says that we're using metric tons instead of short tons. The difference isn't all that much (1 metric ton is about 1.1 short tons, so a $50 tax per metric ton is a bit less than $50 per short ton) but it's worth pondering for the sake of completeness :)
- FYI, the Code Reviser's Office gave me some push-back about calling this a "fee" instead of a "tax", but eventually they agreed. (They argued that a fee is something paid for a service, like a drivers license, and they went along with the argument that this is a fee for polluting the air.)
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Initiative draft from Code Reviser's Office!
Here's the draft the Code Reviser's office came up with based on the language I sent them and a few email exchanges. Some comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
On #1, do you mean that you are not sure that we need a definition of Low Income at all, or do you mean you're not sure of that definition? If it's the latter, do we need to do research of other definitions? Briefly I looked around, and it seems to me that there are a few versions out there, not real straightforward.
On #2, That has bothered me a bit since I first read it. Householders need to come up with cash for maintenance, plus mortgage. I'm thinking they are more cash strapped and need more assistance. Again, research? Would it help us to decide if we knew how much that total amount would be? Is that how we are judging this - the financial impact of those low income house owners receiving or not receiving the sales tax credit?
On #3 I like the idea of a declining-credit structure - always seems more thoughtful.
On #4 - this is so interesting!! My conclusion is to stay with Metric ton. Apples to Apples, down the road. We can compare ourselves with Canada (without doing metric conversion - or not doing it, guessing, and end up knowing we are inaccurate). Plus as other countries come online, again we can easily compare how we are doing with them.
Congrats on making the case for "fee" vs. tax.
Funny bit of humor: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/us/16carbon.html?hp
"Ten states from Maryland to Maine are about to undertake the nation's most serious effort yet to tackle climate change, putting limits on carbon dioxide emissions from utilities and making them pay for each ton of pollutants."
And this from: http://blog.tomevslin.com/2008/09/tom-friedman-be.html Not sure what is meant by 'reduced ss payments?'
"If the price of oil falls far enough (unlikely given new demand but possible), then we should tax it back up and rebate the tax in reduced social security payments for low-income wage earners. Raising prices by reducing domestic supply (as we do by restricting drilling), give a windfall to foreign producers – many of whom are not our friends. Raising prices through taxation arguably reduces the take of the suppliers AND reduces demand. BTW, this is not an argument politicians are likely to make during the election season."
Have you seen this bit yet? funny....
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/
We really need help from folks in the know (WBPC? EOI?) but here are some different definitions of low-income from the RCW:
* RCW 43.185A.010 "Low-income household" means a single person, family or unrelated persons living together whose adjusted income is less than eighty percent of the median family income, adjusted for household size, for the county where the project is located.
* RCW 84.14.010 "Low-income household" means a single person, family, or unrelated persons living together whose adjusted income is at or below eighty percent of the median family income adjusted for family size, for the county where the project is located, as reported by the United States department of housing and urban development. For cities located in high-cost areas, "low-income household" means a household that has an income at or below one hundred percent of the median family income adjusted for family size, for the county where the project is located.
* RCW 70.164.020 "Low income" means household income that is at or below one hundred twenty-five percent of the federally established poverty level.
PS. Also interesting is the language of the Working Families Credit in RCW 82.08.0206
This is Catherine.
re Q 1:
I agree re the arbitrariness of correlation between low income level and federal poverty level (my HMO defines it as 250% of the federal pov. level), So if we have some choice in how we define low income, the question in my mind is how it's possible to know or calculate the fairest definition.
Is the federal pov. level tied to cost of living? With respect to the 125% definition in the draft, is the average cost of living in Wash. state 125% of the US average?
re Q 2, and “property owners are not eligible for the low-income sales tax credit”: Boy, this is a hard one, but I think that's fair, if the property-tax rebate would be a lot larger than the sales tax credit, for a given low-income property owner. There are lots of low-income senior citizens who own their own homes, and it seems to me that one with a home and a property tax rebate would be a lot better off than one without a home and with a sales tax credit, so why should the one with the home have both?
But I haven't thought about other low-income subgroups, or about low-income-senior-citizen-property-owners who have no health insurance...
re Q 3: I vote for declining credit structure. (I'd love to see the math for calculating that one, or for any of these...)
re Q 4 and what kind of ton: If most initiative readers and voters are more familiar with the metric ton, I'd rather stick with that, to make the initiative easier to understand.
Post a Comment