With education facing deep cuts, a Fairbanks legislator has proposed reinstating the education head tax to help pay for education.
Days after the Senate slashed nearly $50 million from school funding, Fairbanks Republican Sen. Click Bishop introduced Senate Bill 97 on Tuesday to implement a yearly tax on workers of $100 or higher depending on income.
Alaska last had an education head tax in 1980. The state income tax was also repealed that year.
The education tax proposed by Bishop is graduated. Workers earning between $10,000 and $50,000 annually would pay $100; between $50,000 and $100,000 would pay $200; between $100,000 and $500,000 would pay $300; and people making more than $500,000 would pay $500 a year. Non-resident workers would also pay the tax.
The tax would expire on either Jan. 1, 2024, or when the natural gas pipeline project, assumed to be the next big source of revenue for the state, comes online.
Bishop said the idea for reinstating the education income tax has been on his mind for a while and that he conducted a poll asking his constituents about the issue two years ago. He said his goal is to both help restore and stabilize education funding and to make sure at least some of the wages paid to non-resident workers stays in the state.
“Twenty percent of the workforce is out of state, and so that money is going right back to their districts,” he said. “We’ve always been an exporter of our resource, and this is one way to get one little bite at our resource and take a little bit of a load off the general fund and keep other agencies.”
Bishop said he estimates the bill would raise between $80 million and $130 million annually. About 20 percent of Alaska’s workforce are non-resident workers, Bishop said.
Via newsminer.com
image credit ADN
