A double-sided tax at the Supreme Court

When is an income tax not an income tax? In Washington state, the answer is when Democrats pretend it’s something else. To get around the restrictions of the state constitution, they passed a 7 percent levy on capital gains, while calling it an excise tax. Remarkably, the state Supreme Court followed suit. It is now up to the United States Supreme Court to intervene under federal law.

The judges will soon decide whether they will hear Quinn v. Washington, a challenge from taxpayers to state excise shenanigans. Washington does not have a graduated income tax because the state constitution prohibits it. As the petitioners explain in their brief, such a tax must be “flat and capped at 1 percent,” meaning that high earners “cannot be forced to pay more as a percentage of their income.”