{"id":44353,"date":"2020-02-11T01:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/gov-inslee-signs-tax-bill-to-help-fund-higher-education\/"},"modified":"2020-02-11T01:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T09:30:00","slug":"gov-inslee-signs-tax-bill-to-help-fund-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/gov-inslee-signs-tax-bill-to-help-fund-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Inslee signs tax bill to help fund higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Cameron Sheppard, WNPA News Service <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fewer businesses will be asked to foot the bill for higher education programs after Gov. Jay Inslee signed Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 6492 on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n<p>The bill will restructure the business and occupation tax (B&#038;O tax) and surcharges put in place by legislation passed last year to fund investments in public colleges as well as to provide grants that increase access for low- and medium-income students.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We are going to make massive investments in public higher ed,&rdquo; said Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle. &ldquo;Both for the institutions and, more importantly, for the students who need access to these services.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Legislation signed last year and put into effect this year stipulated that on top of the B&#038;O tax rate, certain businesses would also pay a Workforce Education Investment Surcharge.<\/p>\n<p>Pedersen, the new bill&rsquo;s prime sponsor, said he and his colleagues realized the demand for higher education programs was much higher than revenues called for in last year&rsquo;s legislation.<\/p>\n<p>Senate Ways and Means Committee staff member Jeff Mitchell said the tax rate that took effect in January was estimated to have generated $773 million in revenue over four years, while this year&rsquo;s adjustment is estimated to bring in over $1 billion during the same timespan.<\/p>\n<p>Pederson said this new legislation will be &ldquo;simpler to administer, more predictable and sufficient to meet the needs of the state.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said the new surcharge will affect less than 15,000 businesses and applies only to those defined as &ldquo;advanced computing&rdquo; companies, such as Microsoft or Amazon. The earlier legislation affected more than 80,000 companies.<\/p>\n<p>Advanced computing companies are defined as firms that make computer software or hardware, provide cloud computing services, manage online marketplaces, or manage online social networking platforms.<\/p>\n<p>Pedersen said he wanted to focus the majority of the revenue collection for workplace education investment on businesses that &ldquo;by their nature, rely on highly educated professionals.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Law shifts a portion of the tax burden to large tech companies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":44354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,24],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-44353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","category-northwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44353"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=44353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}