Editor,

This is in response to the letter to the editor titled “Urge legislators to fund critical services,” by Ms. Peterson and Mr. Goldberg.

In their letter requesting tax changes to fund critical services, they state: “Our current state tax system is considered the most unfair in the nation, with taxes falling disproportionately on lower-income residents.”

This probably stems from a January 2014 Time, Inc. article titled, “You’ll never guess which state has the most unfair taxes.”

The use of the term “disproportionately” leads one to believe that the poor in this state are paying most of the taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When the school bonds and hospital bonds were voted in by those “lower income” residents who don’t own homes — whose property taxes are now pushing $400 a month? Not theirs, but mine are. Unless we are handing out $400,000 homes to the poor in this state, which I’m sure we’re not.

In fact, the more value your home has, the higher taxes you pay.

How is that regressive?

Just because the rich pay the same sales tax rate doesn’t mean the poor are paying the same amount of taxes. When a poor person is buying taxable goods, they are shopping at thrift stores or big box stores like Walmart, and the items they are buying are not high ticket items. I’m pretty sure if you go into Paul Allen’s home it isn’t decorated with thrift store or Walmart items. Clearly the rich pay much more in sales tax than the poor.

In fact, if I was poor, I could live tax free in Oak Harbor. Since there is a higher vacancy rate in rentals in this town, landlords have a harder time passing on property tax increases to tenants. So I could rent an apartment for about $750, ride the free bus and buy only nontaxable food items and live virtually tax free.

Not only that, taxpayers would be giving me food stamps and paying my medical and dental bills, which means I would be living in a tax negative.

Try that if you’re middle class or rich.

If the goal of the letter was to urge an income tax to the rich, I urge caution. It is a slippery slope that runs downhill to the rest of us. Pretty soon we will all be paying income tax. And the way it works, no tax that you are currently paying will be lowered in any way.

Unless income tax is going to replace property tax, the most regressive tax, a tax in which a government entity can seize your land and home that has been paid for because of the inability to pay taxes.

So yes, you should contact your legislators and indicate that we are already being burdened with excessive taxes and don’t need income taxes added to the mix. And yes, this letter is being written on our national tax day, April 15.

Thomas Kosloske

Oak Harbor