Taxation

Of the fourteen acts which relate directly to taxation four are primarily administrative in nature, one repeals an obsolete statute relating to property tax rebates, one provides additional exemptions from county real estate sales tax, and one provides more favorable treatment with respect to the taxation of extractors of copra. Of somewhat broader significance from a fiscal standpoint is the act providing for reallocation of property tax millages under the forty-mill limitation law, and the act relating to the number of electors required in special school elections held prior to November, 1954. The latter act has been the subject of recent press comment and litigation has been threatened because of uncertainty as to which general election is meant under the language of the act

Taxation

Covers laws revenue-raising measures and substantive and technical amendments

The Washington Tax System—How It Grew

Since the establishment of Washington as a territory in 1854, the state\u27s taxing system has expanded from a simple two-tax program, adequately serving the needs of its rough pioneer communities, into an involved complex of multiple taxes, limited and confined either within a rigid and strictly construed constitutional framework or by the outer limits of economic and political feasibility. Whatever may be one\u27s belief with respect to the desirable extent of the governmental activities and services of the state and its many subdivisions, there can be no denying the proposition that the state\u27s existing revenue system creaks, groans, and mightily strains at the task of providing the funds necessary to maintain the level of governmental activity which citizens and organized groups require their representatives to maintain in the complex of urban, suburban, and rural communities of the state

Statutory Construction

Covers effects of amendments

State Income Taxation as Affected by Property Tax Limitations

On all sides one hears of the crying need for tax reduction. The owner of tangible property, particularly real property, constantly complains that the tax burden imposed is confiscatory While it has been the political slogan of each campaign that taxes will be reduced the public is beginning to realize that there is no relief to be had in this direction. The public demands too much of government today to even hope that such can be realized. The answer to the property owner\u27s plea for taxation relief must be along the line of a new distribution of tax burdens. This has long been the remedy suggested by experts on taxation, and has, in the last two decades, received the approval and recommendation of numerous tax investigating committees and legislative bodies. The income tax is repeatedly urged as the best alternative, or supplementary, method by which this relief may be had. It is the purpose here to discuss the validity of income taxation for state purposes with reference to the objections that may be raised to such a system of taxation under the constitutional limitations upon property taxation. No attempt will be made to consider problems that arise in connection with such taxes, such, for instance, as questions pertaining to progressive features, exemptions, and the like

Elections

Covers primary and general elections for judges

J. Gordon Gose

Noting the passing of Professor Gose

Transfers Intended to Take Effect in Possession or Enjoyment at or After Transferor\u27s Death Under the Federal Estate Tax

The federal estate tax has, at all times since its adoption in 1916, provided for the inclusion in the gross estate of the decedent of all transfers intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment at or after death . The purpose of this provision, obviously, is to prevent avoidance of the estate tax through the medium of transfers legally inter vivos which operate in such a manner as to make them fairly satisfactory substitutes for the testamentary dispositions to which the estate tax primarily applies. In describing the types of transfers to be included within the ambit of the provision here examined, Congress used the words intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment . No reference is made to time of transfer, to transfer of title, to vesting of the interest in the transferee, to the character of the interest or the control which the transferee retains over the thing transferred. Complete, unlimited ownership of chattels or realty carries with it rights of control and disposition, as well as of possession and enjoyment. By referring only to transfers in which possession or enjoyment is postponed until the transferor\u27s death, it would seem that the statute contemplated the inclusion in the decedent transferor\u27s gross estate of the value of things transferred inter vivos, which, in certain respects, may have been complete before death, as long as either one of the two statutorily designated incidents of ownership—possession or enjoyment—was postponed until death

The Constitutional Aspects of Washington\u27s Fiscal Crisis

The aim of this paper is to sketch the scope and nature of the current problem, to explore the legal rigidities that dominate it, and to suggest the apparent steps prerequisite to realistic, durable and workable solutions