Tax Shift

Reviewed by Mark Worth, The Free Press

e've all heard it before: "If the government just listened to [environmental organization here], and passed laws that would [environmental policy here], then we could preserve healthy ecosystems and revive threatened ones without causing a loss of jobs or a drop in wages."

Well, you're about to hear it again. This time, however, it very well might be true.

In Tax Shift, the latest offering from Northwest Environment Watch, Alan Thein Durning -- with University of Washington graduate student Yoram Bauman -- has come up with a way to take a taxing system that rewards environmental destruction, underemployment, and even death, and transform it into one that does the opposite. What borders on miraculous is that Durning says this can be done without the loss of a single penny of revenue to the government.

Here in Washington, for example, we could still raise $16.1 billion a year in state and local taxes (the current amount), but the portion coming from environmental taxes would increase from 16 percent to 45 percent. Modest levies on water, minerals, timber, fish, hydropower, vehicle traffic, pollution, and greenhouse gases -- currently taxed minimally or not at all -- would bring in an additional $4.78 billion annually.

That would be nearly enough to replace all sales taxes, the main reason Washington has the most regressive tax system in the country. Or the new money could be used to eliminate taxes on buildings, a major cause of land speculation, underdeveloped urban property, and high rents. Another option, if decision-makers desire, would be to cut payroll taxes in half or trim corporate income taxes by 30 percent. Whichever, Durning contends, nearly everybody would win -- even CEOs and shareholders of resource-dependent companies, which eventually could profit from innovation.

"Our problem," writes Durning, a former Worldwatch Institute senior researcher, "is that we tax things we want more of, such as paychecks and enterprise, instead of things we want less of, such as toxic waste and resource depletion. Naturally, we get less money and more messes."

It doesn't have to be this way, of course, and if Durning and Bauman's ideas become reality, it won't.

Other excellent Northwest Environment Watch titles include "State of the Northwest," "Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things," "Hazardous Handouts: Taxpayer Subsidies to Environmental Degradation," and "This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence." Become a member (for $25) and receive everything NEW publishes during a year. Contact NEW at 1402 Third Avenue, Suite 1127, Seattle 98101-2118. Tel: (206) 447-1880. E-mail: new@northwestwatch.org. Web: www.northwestwatch.org.