Low-income Idahoans would benefit from tax changes, but will Idaho legislators listen?
When I was just starting out, making $16,000 a year, getting my car repossessed and using my credit card to pay my electric bill, I’m sure a $300 tax rebate would have gone straight toward buying groceries or paying my rent.
Over time, my financial situation has changed for the better, and today I wouldn’t need a tax rebate to keep me from going hungry or being evicted from my apartment.
So how did you spend the most recent Idaho tax rebate?
A relatively new coalition called Elevate Idaho Families is asking low- and moderate-income Idahoans how the most recent state tax rebate affected their budgets.
The idea is to get real stories from real Idaho residents to gain a better understanding of how tax policies affect everyday Idahoans, particularly those at the lower end of the income spectrum.
“Our interest and our goal is really to make our tax policies more responsive to the needs of everyday families,” Alejandra Cerna Rios, executive director of the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, said in a phone interview.
The Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy has provided much-needed analysis over the years of the impacts of legislation. The center has analyzed the state’s grocery tax credit, tax rebates and income tax cuts and showed how, for the most part, these changes disproportionately benefit wealthier Idahoans.
Partners in the Elevate Idaho Families coalition include Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, the Idaho Children’s Trust Fund, the Idaho Foodbank, the Idaho Caregiver Alliance, the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities and PODER of Idaho.
These organizations are on the front lines of helping low- and moderate-income families.
“We want to understand what everyday folks’ needs are and what are the economic issues that they’re facing,” Cerna Rios said. “It’s an important piece of the puzzle. So when we were putting our group together, we really did think about what are the organizations that do interface with everyday families.”
The coalition believes that existing Idaho tax credits — such as the grocery credit and child credits — could be strengthened and expanded for the benefit of regular families.
An Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy analysis of Idaho’s grocery tax credit found that the credit should be $160 per person, not $100. The Legislature raised the credit to $120, not enough to offset the true cost of buying groceries.
The coalition is also in favor of creating a state earned income tax credit, which would benefit an estimated 128,000 low- and moderate-income Idaho households. The maximum average benefit would be $299 for a family with two children, according to the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy. Nationwide, 29 states and the District of Columbia have state-level earned income tax credits.
The cost to the state? About $15.6 million.
That’s a small price to pay to put tax money back into the pockets of Idahoans to put food on the table or pay utility bills.
“There’s already groups that advocate for corporations and others for these tax cuts,” Estefania Mondragon, executive director of PODER of Idaho, said in a phone interview. “But we didn’t see a group that was necessarily focusing on working families in Idaho.”
If we want to help Idahoans avoid homelessness, if we want to get people off food stamps and out of poverty, these kinds of targeted tax policies go a lot further than giving a $6,000 rebate to someone making a half-million dollars a year.
These aren’t handouts; this isn’t welfare we’re talking about. This is taking a clear-eyed look at existing tax policy to see what is most helpful to the most number of people and consequently does the most good for Idaho.
This shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
“We’ve spoken with Democrats and Republicans on these issues,” Mondragon said. “And what we heard from a lot of our Republican counterparts is they’re seeing the need in their communities right now to create some economic policies that will directly affect moderate- to low-income Idahoans.”
The coalition is asking for Idaho families to submit their story about how state tax rebates have helped their family. You can submit your story to the Elevate Idaho Families website, www.elevateIdahofamilies.org
The big question for me is, will Idaho legislators listen?
