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If, like most people, you obtained a present card or two this vacation season, would you need the state claiming your unspent balances should you don’t spend them quick sufficient?
What if the state stated that taking present playing cards was a strategy to shield you, that unspent balances could be higher used for state applications, and should you wished your card again, you would wish to enter your info right into a registry proving your present card is yours?
This isn’t a punchline to a joke about lawmakers reaching straight into your pockets for money: This yr, lawmakers are proposing to take your unspent present card after three years — and this plan is gaining momentum.
Present present card regulation in Washington is among the many most consumer-friendly within the nation — and has been for twenty years. Within the early 2000s, the Legislature unanimously handed a invoice that our Democratic authorities signed into regulation guaranteeing that present playing cards would by no means expire, that authorities would by no means seize present card balances as “unclaimed property,” and that there could be no charges to purchase or use them.
In consequence, present playing cards in Washington, like in most states, by no means lose their worth. If you happen to obtained a house enchancment retailer present card 15 years in the past in your wedding ceremony day and located it in your storage yesterday, it might probably nonetheless be used to assist pay on your teenager’s room makeover undertaking tomorrow.
That is one cause that present card use has exploded in reputation over time. Present playing cards had been the highest present amongst shoppers each single yr from 2006 to 2020, in response to surveys by the Nationwide Retail Federation. In 2023, present playing cards had been second solely to clothes as the preferred present of the yr, with 44% of shoppers naming them as their present of alternative.
If present playing cards weren’t interesting to shoppers, shoppers wouldn’t buy them — to the tune of about $30 billion in total spending this year nationwide. “It’s undoubtedly this sizable determine that almost all pursuits legislators who need to impose a de facto expiration date in your present playing cards, classify unspent present card balances as “deserted” after this expiration date, and require the creation of a registry to ensure that shoppers to reclaim them.
However this proposed change to state regulation would require shoppers to offer private contact info to the state once they obtain a present card — one thing that lawmakers should perceive shoppers are extraordinarily tired of and are unlikely to do — leading to present card balances merely staying with the state as new income.
The proposal is additional complicated to shoppers as a result of states generally use unclaimed property legal guidelines to safeguard deserted property and reunite it with its homeowners. Legally, they might not use these legal guidelines for the only real goal of seizing deserted property from its homeowners and utilizing it as windfall income. And, objectively, states can’t do each: it’s not attainable to grab a $50 present card stability and each return it to its proprietor and use it to pay for public applications.
Throughout this brief session, we hope legislators won’t spend their time and vitality centered on proposals which can be options in quest of issues, and as an alternative give attention to what’s on the doorsteps of all of our communities: fentanyl overdosing, organized retail theft and significant transportation tasks — together with a ferry system on the brink — with hovering value tags. All of this stuff want Olympia’s consideration much more than your present playing cards.
Don’t let anybody make choices in regards to the presents you give or obtain or inform you that you simply’d be higher protected in case your present playing cards had been taken from you to serve the general public curiosity.
Lawmakers ought to set this laws apart and let it expire — not like present playing cards in Washington.
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