WA state said they are just sending it out voluntarily because they don't know what to do. The whole issue is that the IRS declined to clarify, and if it was so clear cut it's really confusing why they wouldn't just respond "yup, you definitely need to send out 1099s for those so we can tax it!"
So if WA had decided to just send us nothing (which to me sounds just as reasonable), rather than let people make the decision themselves in the vacuum left by the IRS, your response would seem to be "since it wasn't on a 1099, it's not taxable"? But that would kind of be based on the whim of WA state, no?
Sorry I'm not trying to be hostile, something in this chain of events just makes no sense at all to this layman.
My only guess is that the tax situation isn't as clear cut as it seems? I probably need a huge history/econ lesson on how taxes work but it doesn't seem quite right that this would be taxed considering anyone taking the payments is already paying almost 1% of their income every year in perpetuity to directly fund paid leave in the long term. As as random person, any logic I can muster as to why this should be taxed is extremely flimsy compared to how I understand federal and state income taxes work... So WA state is going to take a voluntary deduction from my income to fund an optional state program, but then when I go to withdraw from the program I'm paying for, the Federal govt is supposed to get a piece of that even though they already took a federal income deduction from my paycheck? I get the feeling this is probably how a lot of taxes already work and I just need to pay attention more 🙂
