Capital gains tax will help rural communities and struggling families | Guest Opinion

Washington’s Supreme Court will soon make a critical decision that will have a major impact on rural communities. The Court will either decide to uphold the capital gains excise tax on the extremely wealthy, an important step towards balancing the state’s regressive unfair tax code. Or it will continue to entrench this unfair system by striking the tax down.

I’m a retired educator who has lived in Wenatchee for 30 years and taught in public schools for 27 of them. During that time I saw firsthand an alarming number of kids in our community who were essentially raising themselves because their parents had to work incredibly long hours just to pay the rent and put food on the table. Many of these students had virtually no regular contact with their parents because of their work schedule demands. When these kids needed school forms signed, we advised them to leave it on their parents’ pillow with a note explaining what it was for.

Our public schools provide a lifeline and support system for kids like these and others who have little support elsewhere. But every year we as educators are asked to do more with less. Our schools need more nurses and counselors, especially to help the large number of students who are having trouble adjusting to in-person learning after the pandemic.

Wenatchee’s high school, like many around the state, is also desperately in need of renovations. Virtually none of the classrooms have windows and teachers have complained about black mold and leaking roofs. At the beginning of this school year when it was nearly 100 degrees, compressors had to be flown in from out of state to fix the antiquated HVAC system.

Washington’s regressive state and local tax code puts our communities in an impossible situation. We know that our schools need these funds to help our students thrive. But the only way to get them is to ask those same parents who are working overtime just to survive to pay more in taxes. This isn’t fair, and it must change.

The capital gains tax on the extremely wealthy, passed by the legislature in 2021, is a start to fixing this problem. It’s a tax that will be paid by less than .2% or 8200 households in the entire state while raising hundreds of millions of dollars for childcare and school construction. The vast majority of the people who will pay this tax live in wealthy enclaves of the state like King County, while very few live in rural communities like Wenatchee.

Wealthy special interests, of course, do not want to have to pay this tax. They like the current system where people with the lowest incomes pay up to six times more of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthiest 1%. And so they have sued the state in a cynical attempt to get the Supreme Court to declare the tax unconstitutional.

The Court has fortunately ruled to allow the state to begin collecting the tax while they make a final decision on whether or not it is constitutional. I urge the justices to side with students and families over the few wealthy elites who do not want to pay what they owe in taxes. Our children’s futures depend on it.

This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 11:56 AM.