Chief
01-29-2008, 12:51 PM
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/349096_virgin29.html
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I COLUMNIST
The State Department of Revenue's quadrennial report on tax exemptions runs 288 pages (not including the introduction and appendices) and lists 567 "exclusions, deductions, preferential tax rates, deferrals and credits" enacted since Washington was a territory.
So who's really going to notice a few more?
Even though this is supposedly the short legislative session, and even though state government supposedly faces a period of budget austerity, the hardworking lawmakers in Olympia just can't resist the temptation to slip a few more pages into the report that will be issued in 2012.
Consider, for example, Senate Bill 6299, which would exempt beekeepers who are registered with the state and have at least 45 hives from sales tax on wholesale sales of honey and bee products, the business and occupation tax on pollination services and the sales and use tax on the sale of pollinating bees.
Or take a read of Senate Bill 6351, a concise bit of legislation that declares, according to the bill digest, that "certain popcorn mixtures are not prepared food for sales and use tax purposes."
It is highly unlikely that these two measures, separately or in combination (perhaps as the Omnibus Popcorn and Honey Act of 2008) will deplete the state's wallet, no matter how thin it is becoming of late.
It's the combination and cumulative effect of all those small and big tax breaks and subsidies that pose interesting budget questions and challenges, not to mention offering tempting targets for revenue enhancement and setting up delicious scrimmages between competing interests.
Not often are the phrases "government report" and "fascinating reading" used in conjunction, but such is the case for taxpayers with even a glancing interest on who is or isn't paying for state government, and what they are or aren't paying. (The report can be found online at goto.seattlepi.com/r1238.)
The report provides easy-to-digest synopses of each of the exemptions or breaks, an estimate of how much it amounts to and some history and reasons why it was enacted in the first place.
Those details answer the small "w" question of why. The report as a whole figures prominently in the big "w" question of Why, as in, Why are we handing out all these tax breaks, and isn't there a better way of collecting revenue to run state government?
The simplistic, cynical and on occasion accurate explanation is that the exemptions exist because various special interests conspired in back-room, closed-door collusion with legislators to sneak those provisions in when no one was looking.
Long article but well worth the read in advance of the inevitable cries of poverty from Olympia, and the gnashing of teeth over what to cut...
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I COLUMNIST
The State Department of Revenue's quadrennial report on tax exemptions runs 288 pages (not including the introduction and appendices) and lists 567 "exclusions, deductions, preferential tax rates, deferrals and credits" enacted since Washington was a territory.
So who's really going to notice a few more?
Even though this is supposedly the short legislative session, and even though state government supposedly faces a period of budget austerity, the hardworking lawmakers in Olympia just can't resist the temptation to slip a few more pages into the report that will be issued in 2012.
Consider, for example, Senate Bill 6299, which would exempt beekeepers who are registered with the state and have at least 45 hives from sales tax on wholesale sales of honey and bee products, the business and occupation tax on pollination services and the sales and use tax on the sale of pollinating bees.
Or take a read of Senate Bill 6351, a concise bit of legislation that declares, according to the bill digest, that "certain popcorn mixtures are not prepared food for sales and use tax purposes."
It is highly unlikely that these two measures, separately or in combination (perhaps as the Omnibus Popcorn and Honey Act of 2008) will deplete the state's wallet, no matter how thin it is becoming of late.
It's the combination and cumulative effect of all those small and big tax breaks and subsidies that pose interesting budget questions and challenges, not to mention offering tempting targets for revenue enhancement and setting up delicious scrimmages between competing interests.
Not often are the phrases "government report" and "fascinating reading" used in conjunction, but such is the case for taxpayers with even a glancing interest on who is or isn't paying for state government, and what they are or aren't paying. (The report can be found online at goto.seattlepi.com/r1238.)
The report provides easy-to-digest synopses of each of the exemptions or breaks, an estimate of how much it amounts to and some history and reasons why it was enacted in the first place.
Those details answer the small "w" question of why. The report as a whole figures prominently in the big "w" question of Why, as in, Why are we handing out all these tax breaks, and isn't there a better way of collecting revenue to run state government?
The simplistic, cynical and on occasion accurate explanation is that the exemptions exist because various special interests conspired in back-room, closed-door collusion with legislators to sneak those provisions in when no one was looking.
Long article but well worth the read in advance of the inevitable cries of poverty from Olympia, and the gnashing of teeth over what to cut...