Now's not the time to raise payroll taxes

WASHINGTON'S rate of unemployment is the highest in 25 years. In the middle of an economic crisis, it makes no sense to make it more expensive to hire a worker.

Just such a measure, Senate Bill 5963, is now in the final steps in the Legislature. The bill would make unemployment pay more generous for workers who qualify for less than the $541 maximum weekly benefit — an increase that is almost certain to trigger an increase in payroll taxes.

This would be understandable if Washington paid unusually poor benefits. But this state pays the fifth-highest benefits in the country. It also collects from employers an amount per worker 2.5 times the national average. Employers in Washington pay more than twice per employee as do employers in California.

Probably if Americans re-evaluated the tax system, we wouldn't be taxing payrolls at all, because taxing a thing tends to discourage it. Probably, we should be taxing something like resource use or air pollution. Yet we tax payrolls — and now, in the middle of an economic crisis, we are offered a bill that is sure to lead to an increase in the tax on payrolls.

If legislators approve the bill and raise payroll taxes even higher, certain industries — grocery retailing, electric utilities, bank branches, car repair — will grumble and take it, because they can't move away without losing their business.

But manufacturing is not like that. Boeing does not have to assemble airplanes here. Kenworth does not have to assemble trucks here. Nalley chooses to make chili here. And so on.

Every legislator who is thinking of voting for the bill should get on the phone to a manufacturer in his or her district. One will do. Choose any one, so long as it competes with rivals outside of Washington and has been struggling to make money.

Ask about this bill — and prepare for an earful.