While elves are hard at work building toys and Santa is preparing for his upcoming epic eve, our Legislature is already planning to introduce tax increases.
Washington voters saw fit to stuff our yuletide stockings with lumps of coal by ensuring Democrat super majorities in both houses of Congress and electing yet another Democrat for governor.
A new bill to add an excise tax (single purpose tax) to ammunition and firearm sales and require a license to purchase a new firearm along with gun safety training, another tax unless the state provides the training for free, is already under consideration by Rep. Liz Berry, a Democrat of the 36th District.
This seven-point lobbying effort is being pushed by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. This is not the first time “excise” taxes have raised their ugly head under the stewardship of Democrats.
The camel’s nose, all the way to his ears, was slid under the excise tax tent in 1991 with the passage of a bill forcing divorced parents and only divorced parents to pay college expenses for their children (RCW 26.19.090).
Forcing divorced parents to pay for their children’s college expenses is a single purpose tax on a specific group of people. Washington’s constitution, Article 1, section 12, clearly forbids government giving privilege to any special group. The opposite should also be true; the government should not punish any specific group with single purpose regulation or tax.
In 2021. The camel squirmed into the tent all the way to his first hump; the Democrat Legislature passed and our Democrat governor signed a bill taxing the income of a specific group of people characterized as “the wealthy.”
Two constitutional principles were violated and challenged in court (Quinn v. State of Washington). The Washington state Supreme Court ruled the wealth tax was in fact an excise tax and therefore not unconstitutional.
With the upcoming, 2025, legislating session nearly upon us, ‘tis the season to be wary of our Legislature, and ‘tis the season to let your state representative, senator and governor know ‘tis not the season to add more single purpose, probably unconstitutional taxes to our overburdened tax tent.
It will be two long years before we get another chance to halt the ever-encroaching camel from fully occupying our tent. Perhaps we should run an initiative to place an excise tax on spendthrift politicians.
The precedent has already been set.
Gregory Riplinger
Centralia
