The cause of District statehood may have a powerful new foe, and it’s not the Constitution, voter apathy or the Republican-controlled Congress.
It’s technology.
For five years, city residents filling out their tax forms have had the option of contributing to the DC Statehood Delegation Fund, which helps pay the expenses of the District’s “shadow” congressional delegation and its efforts to lobby for statehood.
But after averaging $29,000 in contributions a year from 2007 to 2009, donations to the fund plummeted to $12,000 in 2010 — a 55 percent decline from the previous year — according to the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer. Although there’s no perfect way to explain the drop short of polling every District taxpayer, shadow Sen. Paul Strauss (D-D.C.) has a theory.
“You know e-filing is killing us,” Strauss said.
The contribution system, he said, “works really well for paper D-40EZ filers. It works less well for long-form filers and e-filers.”
Taxpayers can contribute as much as they want to the statehood fund, with a minimum donation of $1. The selected amount is either added to their tax bill or subtracted from their refund. (They can also contribute to the Public Fund for Drug Prevention and Children at Risk and the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Fund.)
On the single-page D-40EZ — used by filers who don’t itemize their deductions, make less than $100,000 a year and meet a few other criteria — those voluntary contribution options appear in the middle of the form.
But the longer D-40 form used by other individual taxpayers does not mention any of the three funds. Advocates for statehood — or cleaning up the Anacostia or battling drugs — need to fill out and attach a separate Schedule U form for “Additional Miscellaneous Credits and Contributions,” which includes the three items.
The instruction booklet that accompanies the D-40 and D-40EZ forms doesn’t explain what the DC Statehood Fund is or where the money goes.
District residents can file their taxes electronically directly with the city, or they can use commercial tax preparation software. Some filing programs may make the the task more difficult than others.
A spokesman for H&R Block, one of the country’s largest tax preparation firms, said his company allows District filers to contribute to the statehood fund electronically — if they fill out the Schedule U form.
Shadow Rep. Mike Panetta (D-D.C.) said that when he did his taxes last year using the popular TurboTax software, finding the statehood fund was difficult.
“It wasn’t presented to me automatically. It was something I had to go in and dig for,” Panetta said. “How many people are going to do that?”
The problem, Panetta added, is that “we’re not only asking people to give up money, we’re asking them to jump through hoops to do it.”
D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who wrote the law creating the statehood fund, said he would talk to the city’s chief financial officer about the possibility of making it “more prominent” on tax forms. (Mendelson has an accountant prepare his taxes, and he said he didn’t know whether he had contributed to the fund in recent years.)
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