Statement: Mayor Bowser Stands Against Tax Justice

Mayor Bowser returned the fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget to DC Council unsigned, criticizing Councilmembers’ efforts to raise additional revenue to reverse the harmful cuts and wholesale elimination of critical and innovative social programs in her budget proposal. Her action is short of a veto, but dangerously invites federal interference in District governance as the budget heads to Congressional review. 

In her letter to DC Council, the mayor claims the Council “needlessly” raised property and income taxes. But what the mayor fails to acknowledge is that she proposed the lion’s share of tax increases for FY 2025 and the four-year financial plan, including an increase to the sales tax, which asks the most of DC’s lowest paid residents. The mayor’s budget proposal would have also raised taxes on families with low and moderate incomes by cutting planned expansions to the DC Earned Income Tax Credit. 

The Council’s income tax increases that Mayor Bowser refers to were nothing more than the elimination of small, ineffective tax breaks. She also specifically condemned the targeted residential property tax increase on homes valued over $2.5 million, which advances racial equity while raising needed funds for the District. Under the increase, a household with a $2.6 million home, for example, would pay only $150 a year in additional property taxes. That’s equivalent to the cost of a meal and drinks for two at a nice DC restaurant. 

DC’s lawmakers should raise enough revenue to support thriving communities where people want to live and do so through tax changes that also help correct a history of racist policies that have privileged high-income and wealthy households and businesses in our tax system. We put forward the People’s Tax Plan, providing many options for DC lawmakers to do just that, including proposals to ensure corporations operating in DC contribute to our shared resources, target tax increases on the wealthiest through capital gains, and an expansion of the property tax credit for homeowners and renters with lower incomes. 

But the mayor and DC Council enacted only a few of these proposals and limited their own ability to adequately fund programs to address housing instability and support unhoused residents, even after a 14 percent increase in residents experiencing homelessness over 2023. Contrary to what she said in her letter, Mayor Bowser raised taxes in ways that will hit hard at those struggling the most while pursuing spending cuts that demand the biggest sacrifices from DC’s lowest income residents, all while rejecting efforts to ask more of the wealthiest among us. 

DC has better choices than that. Together, we can fight for a tax system for justice so we can avoid harmful budget cuts, end poverty in the District, and build an inclusive economy rooted in community care.