Alaska House Democrats are pushing a bill to impose a universal education head tax on every Alaskan who “earns a wage or has self-employed net earnings.”
Sponsored by Anchorage Democrats Zack Fields (Anchorage), Alyse Galvin (Anchorage), Andrew Gray (Anchorage), along with leftist Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, House Bill 152 would establish a $150 head tax on all wage-earning Alaskans.
“This is a tax that applies for everyone and is projected to generate approximately $40 million to assist with funding education,” the sponsors statement notes. “
Additionally, the bill adds a flat rate 4% income tax on an individual’s income that exceeds $150,000 per year or a couple’s income that exceeds $300,000 per year (if filing taxes jointly). For example, if an individual has $200,000 of taxable income, they will pay $2000 in Alaska education income taxes, representing 4% of $50,000 (the amount over $150,000), plus the $150 education head tax, for a total of $2150 in Alaska education taxes.
Democrats see this as a way to generate more money for Alaska’s chronically underperforming public schools, which already spend more per pupil than nearly every other state in the nation.
Rather than champion stronger accountability measures or offer support for more school choice options – such as home, charter and private education – this bill seeks is narrowly aimed at raising up to $40 million in additional revenue for government-run schools.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
The sponsor’s statement echoes the talking points of teacher unions and entrenched educational bureaucrats who claim state schools simply need more money, not greater accountability, in order to improve outcomes.
Despite historic increases to education funding last year, the bill’s sponsors claim lawmakers must “quickly plan for a long-term solution before students across the state suffer another year of inadequate education due to insufficient funding.”
HB 152 would treat resident and non-resident Alaska earners alike, with both paying the Alaska education tax on their Alaska earnings.
The sponsors want to make it easy for Alaskans to simply sign off a portion of their PFD check to cover the education tax, claiming that voluntarily forfeiting a portion of the PFD “would mean, in practice, that most Alaskans would not pay any tax out of pocket.”
HB 152 is scheduled for a public hearing with “invitation only” testimony in the House State Affairs Committee on Feb. 17, at 3:15 p.m.
TAKING ACTION
— Click here to email or call the members of the Alaska State Affairs Committee.
26 Comments
I always thought we should have kept the $10 head tax for schools from the 1980s.
That $10 tax would be ~$40 now inflation adjusted.
Are these greedy pigs hoping to say: “OK, well how about we half the head tax & make it $75” ?
Fields is my yuppie rep.
He has stated we have to tax more & spend more to make ANC attractive to outside yuppies like himself.
Not sure why he doesn’t move back outside where there are high taxes, spending and the great schools he desires.
**Anchorage is in desperate need of funding because they can’t manage money and I’m not funding ASDs bad habits. Fairbanks somehow managed to balance their budget over the last few years to where they’re back to having a surplus, ASDs incompetency is their own to dig out of.
More thievery for their political allies. At least in the past they would do a middling job educating children.Now they can’t even do that. But they want more of our money. Disgusting.
Perhaps if the Anchorage School Board could hire a competent Superintendent rather than the charity hire they have, and bought him a calculator, we could figure out how to: use last year’s textbooks, maintain the schools we need and close and sell off the rest, get rid of extraneous staff positions along with their bloated fringe benefits, and spend time on reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with some real history and perhaps civics. Easy peasy. Until that happens, I cannot imagine paying any more in taxes than I already do to fund a bloated grift machine for pitiful results.
As an educator and a graduate from Alaskan schools who had to medically resign due to the school I was working in causing chronic illness 3 years ago, I can speak directly to what is going on with Alaska’s educational system. The year I resigned, 2 other teachers and an EA had to resign as well due to illness. Four years prior 3 teachers resigned that year with two of them moving out of state due to illness. We are all doing fine now. I haven’t been sick in over a year with anything and it isn’t because of germ theory (germs the students are spreading), it is because of the mycotoxins, endotoxins, and other pathogens I was being exposed to on a daily basis in water damage schools. Every Alaskan should be asking for a full independent audit to see where all the money has been spent. You will find a lot of it is on healthcare. Ask for a 20 year analysis and I bet you find that as the facilities aged the health of the employees decreased and health care costs have risen. The gaslighting is real but he truth will be revealed and a whole lot of people will be exposed in Alaska for the cover-up and corruption. Indoor air quality has everything to do with low test scores, absentism, and behavior issues. The nuerological damage is undeniable. https://www.steppingstonesforchildren.com.au/mould-neurodevelopment-for-children/, https://www.thetreetop.com/aba-therapy/does-mold-cause-autism
I and many collegues have experienced and seen first hand what the schools are doing to both children and staff members. That is why the Indoor Air Quality and Healthy Schools Act of the 119th Congress is so important. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9131
If you can’t count on our state and local government agencies to do the right thing, you have to go to the federal government. None of the schools I have been in would pass an accurate test or assessment from the National Organization of Remediators Microbrial Inspectors. I don’t want to pay additional taxes for sure, but definitely not to a government and schools that gaslight and misinforms the public on what is really going on. Starting to look for a new state to call home with less taxes and government officials not bought off by the NEA in Alaska is looking better all the time. When a colleague of mine who had to retire due to illness asked her retirement counselor what is the reason most teachers say they are retiring, the response was, “About 90% due to illness.” Let that sink in, we don’t have a teacher shortage we have a sick building (schools) issue and the public is being gaslit.
If you are a parent with students in public schools have them checked out before they go back to school in the fall. Have them do a urine test https://realtimelab.com/, or a blood test https://www.moldco.com/ (the 99 dollar test is fine). Then retest before Christmas break to see if they are being exposed in the schools. We have reached a point with AI and technological advances that schools won’t be able to continue to environmentally poison their occupants much longer.
Is your union not contractually obliged to ensure workplace safety through periodic safety inspections conducted by non-government organizations if necessary?
Wow double taxes plus they took the dividend and added it to the general fund. If this is invitation only testimony it excludes public testimony, “taxation without representation.” Be careful who you vote for. They are coming for your money.
Wow! Steal our PFDs and then demand a “education” tax?! Wood chippers have other purposes than their intended use.
so they want me living in a village to pay for Anchorages made up $90 million short fall??
How about hell no.
I think you will find that it costs about twice as much to educate a child in a village as it does in Anchorage. I’m not sure your argument is valid. However, Anchorage does need to find an adult to put in charge and figure out how to shrink the size of their school district to actually meet the needs of the kids.
If we’re going back to the state income tax and School Tax of the pre-pipeline era, the PFD has to go into history first.
The Education system in this state is an abomination and the Democrats only thing is to throw more money at a system that fails to educate children. TELL THE DEMOCRATS TO GO POUND SAND.
As a retiered AK teacher that has lived and taught in those places where Alaska spends the most money on education, I am going to speak a hard truth that most of you wont like. Those expensive locations are the very same places that pull down Alaska’s average test scores. Until the State addresses that fact, as the old saying goes, you are just pouring money down a hole. I would say that truancy is a big issue and school education not a huge priority in far too many cases. There is a huge culture gap between the “road system” and the “villages ”
Also, rural schools attract the least experienced teachers because of higher salary and ease of getting a position.
As more and more parents turn to alternatives to public education, this is unfair. They should not be penalized for choosing an educational method they feel is superior to the failing, woke-agenda driven public education system. Seems time for a tax revolt.
YES
Amen
“An Act establishing an education tax on the income of individuals, partners, shareholders in S corporations, trusts, and estates…”
(https://www.akleg.gov/PDF/34/Bills/HB0152A.PDF)
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Estates? That’s cold. Even dead people gotta pay their fair share so the education industry can live forever?
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Savvy folks won’t be surprised when the February 17 “hearing” turns out to be a noisy delphi meeting with a predetermined outcome, packed with shills prostituting for the education-industry, proclaiming loudly, if not logically, the desperate need for a tax which everyone, even the dead, must pay for the education industry to survive.
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They may believe voters don’t have much leverage, with FUBAR’d election and grand-jury systems, but that doesn’t rule out petition drives to stop tax enforcement, publicizing their PFD-steal-plus-tax into a personal, national embarrassment, blowing the whistle on education-industry fraud, waste, and abuse, jury nullification for tax rebels, and turning out to vote in numbers that make elections too big to rig, too real to steal.
Thank you Joel for the contact link to the State Affairs Committee members. Hopefully AW readers are plowing the committee with emails respectfully telling them “h*** no.” Since when is a “public” hearing invitation only when it comes to a bill that would tax all Alaskan residents (and non-residents earning AK income) with a head tax coupled with an education income tax???
That should be dead on arrival. Highway robbery. They are pushing people out of Alaska.
We need to put out the trash, next election.
Clean your act up first before you go attempting a tax, imbeciles!
There is no reason to continue funding a failing Public education system until reforms are enacted. To the people saying it is the village schools bringing down the average grade in Alaska. Ditch your racism and stop lying. It is leftist indoctrination that is pulling down the grades
when all grades children were taught by one woman in the one room schoolhouse, 16yr olds would emerge reading and writing 2 languages and then go home and use geometry to build a barn. they could mend fences, raise food, raise animals, dig a well for water, and understand CONCEPTS. in Alaska, the ADULTS would fail the 3rd grade readers I have from 109yrs ago. Young adults cannot understand consequences nor concepts, would die of thirst with a wellwater hose rught next to them, I have met cab drivers in their mid 20s who do not know what EastWestNorthSouth means and only speak in rudimentary 3nd grade English. The disruptive behavior of youth and their demands for reward to show up and shut up will continue until America strips it ALL and begins again. Education begins as a baby. some of us were readers at 6yrs old which built a nation of curious, creative, contemplative citizens. PARENTS ARE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR GUIDING OFFSPRING TO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD.
This was my email to my rep:
Rep. McCabe,
Regarding this sneaky income tax to further fund the teacher’s union, please tell them we said
NO. HELL NO.
As a business owner, about the last thing I need is more paperwork, taxes and threats of penalties if I’m late. If these totalitarians really cared about kids’ educations, they’d expand vouchers and home school funds.
I will mobilize against them.
The thieves that stole our Permanent Fund do not care one iota for our children’s education. They want to steal more money from us because there is no discipline for trimming down. The first mistake by previous legislators is to have unlawfully kept the capital in Juneau instead of moving it to Willow. The money they need should be invested in the move and follow the mandate from the voters on two different occasions. We need the ability to wring the necks of rotten legislators when necessary as in this situation.. The NEA and other lobbyists get in the faces of the legislators nonstop. We have no access. Neo-marxists in Juneau are leading the fight to promote their transgender WOK, anti-family, anti-god agenda. It has already been in the curriculum. Legislators need to make decisions for the “Common good” and not for the NEA or other neo-marxist idols. The honest action to take is school choice. Government bureaucrats need to reduce the alaskan debt. Pray for a return to appying the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, the Ten Commandments, the US Constitution and stop trying to decolonize our children. We do not need the ideology of oppressor/oppressed.
George rauscher needs to step down! Get rid of all the perverts in office!