Interview/debate with Snohomish County Republican Party chair Steve Mosman about their initiative to repeal the millionaire’s tax

The Snohomish County Republican Party held a signature-gathering event in Snohomish today for the initiative to repeal the “millionaire’s income tax”, and I stopped to see if anyone would talk to me. A couple of people recognized me as that “darn leftist” but nobody gave me any trouble.

The Snohomish County Republican Party chair, Steve Mosman, said he’d talk to me, and I had two main questions:
– They have been arguing that the tax is unconstitutional because it’s a property tax (which in WA is capped at 1%) since your income is your “property”. I said that if you buy a chair, that’s also your property, but you can still tax the *transaction* of buying the chair at 8%, so why can’t you also tax the transaction of earning income?
– They said previous income tax proposals have been unpopular. But if you want to know whether *this* tax proposal is unpopular, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask what polls have shown about the current proposal, rather than past ones?

He was civil but I didn’t think his answers really got to the meat of the questions, but you can decide.

Sorry for the crummy camera work. I was using the back camera on the phone with the screen facing away from me, so I couldn’t tell if it was pointed at my face. Use the selfie camera next time! Or get a co-conspirator to film it.