Wealth tax
My partner suffers from a chronic illness. After his diagnosis, I became his professional in-home caregiver represented by SEIU 775, the caregivers union.
We pay a disproportionate amount in taxes to fund the very services designed to help us. Under Washington’s tax system, lower-income workers, like myself, pay for what we must use to get by — like public transit, healthcare, schooling and housing.
The poor are locked in a vicious cycle — relying on unacceptably underfunded public infrastructure services, funded almost entirely by ourselves, and insufficient to elevate us beyond vulnerability.
HB 1473/SB 5486 would place a 1% tax on the financial property (exceeding $250 million) of Washington’s ultra-wealthy, so that working people who created that wealth can see the fruits of our labor take form in our own communities. We could see the vulnerable housed, healed and…
