WA: "Bill Gates’s Dad Says the Rich ‘Aren’t Paying Enough’ in Taxes"--"Initiative 1098: Signature drive begins"

"Bill Gates’s Dad Says the Rich ‘Aren’t Paying Enough’ in Taxes" (Bloomberg):

Bill Gates’ father wants the Microsoft Corp. co-founder to pay more in income taxes.

Bill Gates Sr., a retired Washington state lawyer, supports a proposed ballot initiative that would require the state’s highest earners including himself and his son to pay an income tax. Washington now collects no personal income taxes.

“Poor people and middle-income people are paying too much to support the state and rich people aren’t paying enough,” Gates Sr. said in an interview yesterday in Seattle. “That’s the starting point for me.” MORE...

"Initiative 1098: Signature drive begins" (Joel Connelly-seattlepi.com):

A state income tax has for years been the "third rail" of Washington politics, but a broad activist coalition on Wednesday night launched a signature drive to put Initiative 1098 onto the November ballot.

It would be the first time a tax reform measure, including an income tax, has been put to a public vote in nearly 40 years.

"It's been around the block several times," said former Seattle City Councilwoman Phyllis Lamphere, who held office in the early 1970s when popular Republican Gov. Dan Evans tried to reform the state tax system. Voters handed Evans his head, and then a year later re-elected him.

Even though unemployment was down in figures released Tuesday, the state is still hurting. Painful cuts have hit education and government services, and Washington is burdened with what Bill Gates Sr. told supporters is "the 50th -- the last -- state in terms of the regressivity (sic) of its tax system. MORE...

"Memo to Tim Eyman: Ballot title changes to I-1098 don't hurt the measure's chances" (Andrew-NPI Advocate):

Over at The Olympian's Politics blog, reporter Brad Shannon has a recap of yesterday's happenings in Thurston County Superior Court, where Judge Richard Hicks ruled on the final ballot title language for Initiative 1098, the new version of the high-earners income tax proposal championed by William Gates Sr. MORE...