Phil Roberts, _A Penny for the Governor, A Dollar for Uncle Sam: Income Taxation in Washington_. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. xii + 198 pp. $35 (cloth), ISBN: 0-295-98251-9.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Terri A. Sexton, Department of Economics, California State University, Sacramento.
During the past year, virtually every state has been searching for the appropriate mix of tax increases and spending cuts to close a budget deficit. If there has been one lesson learned in the current fiscal crisis, it is the danger of relying too heavily on one or a few sources of revenue. Diversity is the key to survival. Yet there are twelve states that have eschewed one or more of the major taxes in their arsenal. Washington is one of nine states that does not impose a broad-based individual income tax. In _A Penny for the Governor, A Dollar for Uncle Sam_, Phil Roberts explores the connections between politics and tax policy as he examines how state income taxes have been resisted in Washington throughout its history.
He describes the Washington experience with the Federal Civil War Income Tax (1861-1873) as a period of opposition in which compliance was voluntary and administration was “inefficient and largely ineffectual against evasion.” In contrast, the tax met less opposition in Oregon where there was less turnover of assessors and collectors, and the administration of the tax was more uniform and efficient. Also, the tax was administered by Oregon natives as opposed to “outsiders,” as was the case in Washington.
[snip]
Roberts provides the play-by-play, identifying all of the political participants and dissecting each of the voting outcomes. The politics of Washington’s avoidance of state income taxation are clearly presented and extremely well documented. As an economist, however, I am left to wonder what their revenue history and future revenue prospects look like.
Terri A. Sexton is the associate director of The Center for State and Local Taxation at the University of California, Davis. She is co-author (with Arthur O’Sullivan and Steven M. Sheffrin) of _Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13_ (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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Posted by Peter G. Klein
