Oregon Public Broadcasting

Washington State lawmakers are scrambling for ideas to close the budget gap. Now an old idea may be suddenly back in vogue: closing tax loopholes to balance the budget.  Olympia Correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

These tax breaks extend to everything from liquor sold to the military to electric power exported or sold. All told these loopholes are worth a whopping - $70 billion every two years. Gosh, close a few loopholes and the state’s $5 billion dollar deficit goes poof –magically.

Well, easier said than done. Paul Guppy is with the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank. He serves on a legislative  commission to review tax preferences.
 
Guppy: "You put together a list of a couple of hundred of these, you would get to three or four billion dollars in tax savings for the government – or you would increase tax revenue to the government. But you’re going to offend a lot of people.”
 
That’s because each loophole has a constituency – and in most cases a lobbyist in Olympia.

Currently, Washington’s Tax Preference Commission is in the midst of a ten year review of all of the loopholes.

Along the way it’s recommending to lawmakers which loopholes should stay and which ones should go. I’m