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Senate sends revised revenue package to House

Friday, March 19 2010 - The Hopper | Permalink

OLYMPIA — The state Senate on Friday revised a major revenue bill and again sent it to the House of Representatives as part of a balanced approach to closing a $2.8 billion budget shortfall.

The Senate’s two-bill revenue package would now raise $809 million through June 30, 2011.

Senate Bill 6143, approved Friday on a 25-18 vote, closes more than a dozen tax loopholes and extends the sales tax to bottled water for three years.

It would increase the state sales tax by two-tenths of 1 percent and the state’s business and occupation tax on service businesses by one-quarter of 1 percent for three years each. Under the revised version, Realtors, research and development businesses, and nonprofit and public hospitals would not be affected by the surcharge. The sales tax increase is expected to cost the typical household $20 a year.

The bill also doubles the small business tax credit permanently for service businesses and funds the implementation of the Working Families Tax Rebate. Low-income families would start receiving checks in 2012.

The package will represent a tax cut for thousands of small businesses and low-income families.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, said economic crisis requires “shared responsibility, shared sacrifice” but noted that new taxes make up just a fraction of the Senate’s solution to the three-year, $12 billion budget problem.

“Only a small percentage of our total problem is being solved by revenue,” she said.

And Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, noted the most of new revenue in the package comes from taxes that are temporary.

“What we are doing here is thinking about taxes last, thinking about taxes as the smallest part of the solution,” Hargrove said. “We’ve got an extreme crisis. And the crisis is temporary. So the new revenues should be temporary.”

The Senate’s two-bill revenue package also includes Senate Bill 6874 to increase state cigarette taxes by $1 per pack. That measure still needs to be approved by the full Senate.

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The Senate Democratic Caucus is comprised of 27 Democratic Senators from Washington State. For more information visit SenateDemocrats.wa.gov.

 

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