Property, excise, use, sales … there are many taxes one must pay over the years, including several decades of meticulously computed and filed tax returns, but there is one last tax some North Kitsap residents must pay after death.

The Washington Estate Tax.

Washington’s estate tax, a stand-alone tax containing some provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code, according to the Washington state Department of Revenue, taxes any deceased person’s estate valued at $2 million or more. Since May 2005, the tax generated revenue has been funneling into the state Education Legacy Trust Fund, which helps provide resources to promote higher education, smaller class sizes and equal education in NK schools and statewide.

The power as to whether or not to enforce the tax will be in the hands of North Kitsap and statewide voters in the general election Nov. 7 as Initiative 920, a measure recently added to the ballot, aims to repeal any state administered form of death tax.

The money generated by the state estate tax has been increasing annually since 2000 Washington Department of Revenue spokesman Mike Gowrylow said, noting that $139 million was collected in 2004 from roughly 220 estates at a threshold of $1.5 million taxed.

The new, and current, estate tax was initiated by the state Legislature in May 2005 with a filing threshold on estates valued at more than $2 million, which according to a state estimate is between 200-250 estates per year, Gowrylow said.

“The new estate tax (2005) which has a hiring filing threshold is expected to bring in less money,” he noted. “It was projected at $97 million for the fiscal year ‘07 but it’s coming in a little lower than that.”

Dennis Falk and the Committee to Abolish Washington State Estate Tax — the force driving Initiative 920 — believe that despite the cause or money generated, the estate tax is wrong.

“I’m motivated on this because I think it’s morally wrong for death to trigger a tax on the property of the deceased,” Falk said recently after I-920 made the ballot with the strength of almost 400,000 signatures. “I’m very confident we can get (I-920) in the approval column. The voters make the final decision and I think they’ll vote for repealing this unjustified tax.”

From 1981 until 2005, Washington state had had no form of additional state-level tax which siphoned a portion of one’s assets after death, Falk said.

He and Dick Patten were the chief partners of a committee which took aim at the state inheritance tax in 1980. The committee gathered a petition of more than 125,000 signatures which gained initiative 402 a spot on the November 1981 ballot where it was approved by a 67 percent vote, repealing then state Inheritance and Gift Tax.

However, over the course of those 23 years, Washington’s deceased persons estates were being taxed all along on a federal level, while the government gave a 5 percent kickback to the state where the money was collected, Gowrylow said. That kickback was eventually phased out of the federal estate tax in January 2005, then in May, the state legislature enacted Washington’s stand-alone estate tax to generate revenue for education.

“The legislature wanted to tie the tax itself to a specific purpose,” Gowrylow said, noting that the previous tax had gone into the state general fund.

In May 2005 all of the revenue generated from the estate tax started going into the state Education Legacy Trust Fund, which is then divvied up among school districts around the state, Washington State Office of Financial Management spokesman Hal Spencer said.

“That fund finances a big chunk of class size reduction in K-12 and also in K-12, it pays for the learning assistance program to help struggling students to catch-up,” Spencer said. “And a portion of the fund also goes to (help students achieve) higher education.”

“They have spending problem, not a revenue problem,” Falk said of Washington schools, noting that school districts receive property taxes as well as special levy taxes as sources of revenue. “(The deceased) have paid all these taxes over a period of years and then government comes a long and they want a death tax because it gives them one last shot to pick the financial bones of the deceased.”

For more information visit the Department of Revenue Web site at www.dor.wa.gov and select the taxes section and find estate tax under other taxes. To learn more about the Committee to Abolish the Washington State Estate Tax visit www.NoEstateTax.org.