Photo by Nivad

Think D.C. taxes are too high? You might not be the only one, and there’s good news coming—today Mayor Vince Gray and D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown announced the creation of a nine-member Tax Revision Commission that will be chaired by former Mayor Anthony Williams.

The commission will pick through the city’s tax code and figure out what’s working, what’s not and what could stand being changed. Though Gray and Brown differed on a tax hike on the city’s wealthiest residents that was imposed last year, they’ve both said at times that a broader look at the tax code was necessary.

The last time something of this sort happened was in 1998, right before Williams was elected mayor. (There was also a commission in 1975.) Among its recommendations, the commission urged Congress to pony up more money for all the tax-free land in the District and allow the city to tax income at its source, i.e. the long-desired commuter tax.

Will the commission succeed? Not to be too cynical, but consider what Stephen Trachtenberg, then president of George Washington University, told the Post at the time the ’98 commission wrapped up its work: “We won’t be the final commission that looks at the District’s tax problems,” he said.

The commission’s members are below:

Chairman Brown nominated former Mayor Tony Williams and three other members to the committee, David Brunori, Research Professor of Public Policy at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University and noted tax policy analyst and author; Teresa D. Hinze, Executive Director, Community Tax Aid Inc.; and Stefan F. Tucker, a Partner at Venable, LLP and Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University.

Mayor Gray also nominated five members to the commission: Ed Lazere, Executive Director, D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute; Nicola Whiteman, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington; Tracy Gordon, a fellow in the Economic Studies Program for the Brookings Institution; Dr. Catherine Collins, Distinguished Professor and Senior Research Associate at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy; and Pauline Schneider, Partner and head of the Public Finance Group at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe.