Will this be the year for tax breaks for the poor?

Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson and advocates like the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, a local nonprofit, have been pushing for tax reform for years. In the past, the bills have come with expensive price tags.

But this year, supporters are suggesting raising taxes on higher-income earners to pay for the measures. These higher taxes were in place from 2009 until 2015.

The tax proposals have broad-based support, ranging from UNITE HERE! Local 5, a union for service workers; the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, a large environmental organization; to the Democratic Party of Hawaiʻi. Nineteen groups have banded together to create the Hawaiʻi Tax Fairness Coalition.

Nicole Woo from the Appleseed Center prefers the House version of the bill because she says inequality of taxes in Hawaiʻi is really due to the general excise tax, so removing income taxes on the lowest income bracket isn’t as helpful as providing people with hundreds of dollars in tax refunds.

She also emphasizes that renters in Hawaiʻi pay extremely high housing costs and are long past due for tax relief.

Woo said that Hawaiʻi places the second heaviest tax burden on low income families of any state. That’s in part because of the state’s general excise tax, which disproportionately impacts poor people.

“We really need to make sure that folks who are struggling can get some money back,” she said. “The general excise tax hits low income families 10 times as hard as people in the top 1 percent.”

“Anything can happen in conference, we all know that,” Woo said. “Hopefully [lawmakers] will recognize that there’s a public outcry for these bills.”