Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2006

Stranger Editorial Board

[NOTE: This is an excerpt from a long list of editorial endorsements.]

Initiative No. 920

Vote NO

Conservatives have been bitching about the estate tax (or Republican-christened "death tax") on a national level at a relatively constant rate for the last dozen years. Now it's Washington's turn. The Washington estate tax is the levy that falls on the crustiest of the upper crust's estates—those valued at over $2 million, or $4 million if you're married—when they're inherited by someone else, such as those cherubic, Chanel-clad children. To protect small farmers from getting hit by the tax, the law exempts farm and timberland that takes up at least 50 percent of someone's property from counting toward the value of their estate.

Many wealthy families duck the tax altogether by putting the majority of their money into charities and nonprofit foundations. Because of these sorts of loopholes, large enough for Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen to jump through (his paper donated money to the campaign), only 250 Washington families are burdened by the tax annually. The initiative only got on the ballot thanks to the tireless efforts of skeezy paid petition gatherers, whom The Stranger caught lying to voters about the estate tax in order to snag the required number of signatures back in June.

Those 250 families, though, have a lot of power: Rapacious megadeveloper Martin Selig and John Nordstrom bankrolled I-920 to the tune of a combined $875,000. If you're against the estate tax because you don't exact an ounce or two of spiteful glee from taxing the richy rich, you should think of the children. The $100 million raised annually through the estate tax goes into the cute little coffers of the Washington Education Legacy Trust. The reluctant sacrifice of those 250 families provides Washington colleges with funds to enroll 7,900 more students and decreases class sizes in K–12 schools statewide. Vote no.