The Carson of College of Business will be holding the annual Hoops Tax Forum from 5:30–6:30 p.m. April 1 in Spark G45.

Jeff Gramlich, Hoops Tax Institute director, said the purpose of the forum is to bring awareness of tax issues to students and the WSU community. Washington State Senator Noel Frame will be the featured speaker.

“We mostly focus on what the government does with the money and we rarely focus on how its collected and who it’s collected from,” Gramlich said.

Gramlich said the forum is focused on Washington taxes. In part, this concerns how, until 2024, Washington has had the most regressive tax system in the United States for at least 10 years. Frame is attending the forum to discuss legislative work to increase fairness in the state tax system.

“Senator Frame has made it her mission to change that and she’s succeeded,” he said. “We’re number two now, we’re not number one and there’s some things that have been done that I disagree with, but in general I agree with, especially the working families tax credit.”

The point of the tax forum is to get people to think about taxes in a way that is not boring and gets people interested, Gramlich said. The first few years the forum was held, it was meant to be twice a year, but now it has become an annual event.

“The main discussion is unintended effects. Sometimes you make some real progress on something, like in this case, reducing the regressiveness of the tax system, but there can be unintended effects,” he said. “What we hear most about is the Washington’s Working Families Tax Credit, but we also had … the long-term capital gains tax … [which] imposes a 7% tax on capital gains that exceed $250,000 in any one year,”

Gramlich said there are about 8 million people in Washington and only 700,000 taxpayers are subject to this tax. An unintended effect of the tax is that it may encourage people liable for the tax to leave the state.

In general, Gramlich said he has a lot of respect for Frame because she has done much during her time in the Washington legislature.

“She’s doing something and so much of the time, people are not doing anything. They get elected and they go sit there and not do anything,” he said. “She’s doing stuff and over time it will get fixed and I have the most utmost respect for what she’s doing and her goals.”

Gramlich said he is teaching a new course for the global campus at WSU called Taxing Ourselves, which involves discussing creating a tax system people want. Ultimately, he hopes people think about these issues because if they do not, things will never get better.

“If you want a different tax system, you have to get involved, focus on the issues not on the people, don’t slam individuals but just focus on the issues but just explain the merits of what you think” he said. “If people don’t get involved then some dictator will get involved and just do it for us. It’s really important students learn citizenship and the values of that.”