Sam DeBord’s recent guest column (“What tax reform means here at home,” Kirkland Reporter, Dec. 1,) misconstrues the term “double taxation” when he suggests that the federal income tax and the state property tax are evidence of double taxation. This is not what that term means, which does mean being taxed as both corporate and personal income.

What Mr DeBord is describing isn’t double taxation, it’s just two taxes. After all, why should the feds lose on their income taxes because some other entity taxed you? It makes no more sense than suggesting we be allowed to deduct our federal income tax from our property taxes.

Each tax is a tax on your money or property, and if anything, the property tax itself is worse than double taxation, as it annually taxes the exact same wealth and taxes people on estimated and unrealized gains, meaning we’re taxed on wealth we don’t actually have.

David Wall,

Kirkland