Seattle approves ‘head tax’ on large businesses despite Amazon’s opposition

[floor23]

I grew up in the Seattle area and remembering how things usually work out in Washington, my guess is the head tax will get thrown out in court or state legislators will remove the tax via legislation. Maybe the head tax will remain, but it's going to face some challenges. Big corporations, provide a lot of tax revenue for the State and King County. Anything that threatens state/county coffers is going to receive some pushback.

Seattle would have been better off if they applied the head tax to all employees and made it $25 or $35 per employee instead of just targeting big corporations. Even if Seattle's ambitious plan to reduce homelessness worked (it won't), small businesses would benefit as well, yet they don't have to pay the head tax despite being a beneficiary. This tax just creates incentives for these businesses to reduce their footprint in Seattle, by moving to neighboring cities around Seattle, or leaving the region altogether. It sends a bad message to businesses thinking of opening up shop in Seattle, and like all taxes, it can be increased. It may be $275 today, but years from now the tax could be even more and any business looking at long-term might not want to deal with the risk. If the head tax survives its challenges, I'd bet we see some jobs shift to Bellevue over the next few years.

What's a real shame is that Seattle is going to spend that 100% of that tax money and there will be no improvement in homelessness and housing.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by floor23

I grew up in the Seattle area and remembering how things usually work out in Washington, my guess is the head tax will get thrown out in court or state legislators will remove the tax via legislation. Maybe the head tax will remain, but it's going to face some challenges. Big corporations, provide a lot of tax revenue for the State and King County. Anything that threatens state/county coffers is going to receive some pushback.

Seattle would have been better off if they applied the head tax to all employees and made it $25 or $35 per employee instead of just targeting big corporations. Even if Seattle's ambitious plan to reduce homelessness worked (it won't), small businesses would benefit as well, yet they don't have to pay the head tax despite being a beneficiary. This tax just creates incentives for these businesses to reduce their footprint in Seattle, by moving to neighboring cities around Seattle, or leaving the region altogether. It sends a bad message to businesses thinking of opening up shop in Seattle, and like all taxes, it can be increased. It may be $275 today, but years from now the tax could be even more and any business looking at long-term might not want to deal with the risk. If the head tax survives its challenges, I'd bet we see some jobs shift to Bellevue over the next few years.

What's a real shame is that Seattle is going to spend that 100% of that tax money and there will be no improvement in homelessness and housing.

correct. because it analogous to building more freeways when you are already at capacity. demand is already at its max. im not saying amazon and other companies should not be involved in some sort of process to help the situation but it sounds like the dialogue was only one way. "hey you, give us your money"...the most immediate need for the greater good is taking care of all of the garbage. people who dont live in the urban west dont understand the trash situation. we aren't dealing with normal east coast homeless who mosey around the city. most of the ppl on the nw streets are in need of some serious mental assistance. they are also squatting for long periods of time and literally camping out. tents, grills, piles of bikes and accumulated crap. were talking mounds and mounds of garbage and refuse, needles, broken glass....if we suddenly had a international refugee crisis, that might be different, but where ever these ppl are coming from, well they probably needed some life help there too. so whats the solution?

i dont know. at the very least, we need to enforce anti camping laws because making a the situation more lax will only encourage more people to come and squat. thats what happend in portland. the situation was pretty normal until the last mayor got on board the "housing emergency" bandwagon. he allowed camping over the winter back in 2016 and overnight, boom, hobo camp all over the city sprouted up. the problem is. everytime they became a nuiscance and needed cleaning up, the same situation happens. the sights are filled with garbage, needles, weapons and usually half of the ppl have some kind of warrant or record. housing is a fine goal but there needs to be oversight too, not just letting people do as they may with the hope they get their life sorted....

[mhays]

Permissiveness on camping and garbage piles is going to be right up there with density and transit when I vote next time. And the head tax of course. I'm really interested in cleaning house on two fronts. Unfortunately Seattle recently added council districts with only two seats at large...only three of the nine councilmembers even theoretically represent me.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

And here I thought all this time that the more you paid in taxes, the better your civic services were, and that the more you paid in the taxes, the better paid your civil servants -- such as cops, firefighters, teachers, social workers, VA staff, and others -- were. Silly me.

As someone from Illinois and Chicago I can tell you this is patently false. The second half is true though, the more we pay in taxes, the more handouts to public workers who vote for the people giving them handouts until they turn 45 and retire to Florida with a six figure pension. There's absolutely no relationship between how much you pay in taxes and how much you get in services. It all depends on the efficiency of the government in question. Again just look at Chicago where the "progressive Democrats" who are elected to help the poor have set up a property tax racket that reduces the taxes of anyone who can afford to hire a law firm owned by one of the politicians who are rasing the taxes. Of course this means that a poor person who owns a two flat in Englewood is paying a much higher tax burden than a billionaire who owns a skyscraper downtown. Why? Because the system is set up to benefit the billionaires at the expense of the poor and middle class...

But of course those good ole boy politicians are Democrats, they are here to help the poor and minorities despite the fact that they've built literally the most regressive tax system in the world here in Chicago. Most of our tax comes from the highest sales taxes in the nation, our property tax system gives reductions to people who can afford to bribe (aka "hire") a politically connected law firm, and where we have a constitutional ban on progressive state income tax.

So don't always believe the bullshit you are fed. There is no linear relationship between complex issues like taxation and services.

[mhays]

I'll say it again. I'm fine with paying my share. But the tax should be fair, and incentivize the right things, rather than disincentivize them.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

As someone from Illinois and Chicago I can tell you this is patently false. The second half is true though, the more we pay in taxes, the more handouts to public workers who vote for the people giving them handouts until they turn 45 and retire to Florida with a six figure pension.

As someone from North Carolina, I can tell you that I make less than $40k per year to deal all day with child molesters and babies with so many broken bones that they crackle when you pick them up, in a job so stressful that the girl I replaced had to quit because her hair was falling out. I often work hand in hand with teachers whose pay is some of the lowest in the nation.

What I mean to say is that I really don't care how your state is fucking it up, because my state is fucking it up in its own special way and I can tell you for a fact that I'm sure as shit not paid anything approaching what I'm worth. Your overpaid public servants can kiss my ass. Nobody around here is overpaid and nobody's getting a lavish pension. Here, we can barely keep from bursting into song if the news comes down that the budget is holding steady for the coming year.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc

As someone from North Carolina, I can tell you that I make less than $40k per year to deal all day with child molesters and babies with so many broken bones that they crackle when you pick them up, in a job so stressful that the girl I replaced had to quit because her hair was falling out. I often work hand in hand with teachers whose pay is some of the lowest in the nation.

What I mean to say is that I really don't care how your state is fucking it up, because my state is fucking it up in its own special way and I can tell you for a fact that I'm sure as shit not paid anything approaching what I'm worth. Your overpaid public servants can kiss my ass. Nobody around here is overpaid and nobody's getting a lavish pension. Here, we can barely keep from bursting into song if the news comes down that the budget is holding steady for the coming year.

Incredibly, I agree with you both.


Public servants in our large expensive cities make a lot of money comparatively. I saw a "lineman" job(working on traffic lights) on Chicagos city job page that advertised 8,300 a month. Thats almost 100k for a job that pays around 45-50k in Arkansas.

But at the same time, in smaller cities and in the south in general(not so much larger cities), public workers do not really make too much, at all. The police here in Norfolk start at a sad wage, compared to one in Austin or Seattle. I know they are more expensive but look at the numbers.


Both can be right. We have certain states, certain cities, who waste too much money on public workers and their pensions. We also have states and cities who pay way too little and hurt their missions. Not everything is black and white.

[skyscraper]

Seattle, heed:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...cupertino.html

[10023]

Originally Posted by skyscraper

Seattle, heed:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...cupertino.html

These taxes are barely a rounding error for either company. And surely the Cupertino taxes barely defray the extra costs imposed to provide infrastructure for that anachronistic monstrosity of a headquarters (if even that).

[llamaorama]

Defending these huge corporations and worrying about them leaving is fueling an endless race to the bottom with taxes and regulations. These companies have no loyalty to the community so they shouldn't get incentives or special treatment.

Maybe local economic development officials should think about how to be accommodating to small and medium sized companies rather than try to land big fish by selling out taxpayers. Dependency on giant employers seems to correlate with bad outcomes in the long run.

[pdxtex]

^^^ i just see it as lazy policy. democrats run one single play when it comes to raising money....raising taxes. im not going to call the homeless crisis a crisis because it is not. its the product of bad policy. up until 2016, point in time homeless surveys remained pretty much unchanged in portland. so from the beginning of the recession, thru the very worst years of it and during recovery, our homeless population didnt increase in any meaningful way. the same can be said for seattle. the situation didnt turn dire until the west coast "housing" crisis was declared and camping was decriminalized. it almost sounds like a conspiracy. "lets declare an emergency, allow camping, our homeless population will go thru the roof (it did!!) and then we will rake in the dough thru taxes and federal grants.....

[Doug]

Originally Posted by mhays

Until recently Seattle was pretty well run.

Now the lunatics run the asylum, and other lunatics run rampant. And a third set of lunatics just ruined much of the public information that used to be available about construction permits in the name of "improving" access, apparently without talking to anybody.

Yeah it is turning into Bay Area North. I miss many things about the Seattle area. The rain and naive activism are not on that list.

[mhays]

Five years ago, tents were relatively rare. Today they're everywhere. This was a coordinated campaign. It might have been with good intentions, but it might have also had a "now they'll be more visible" component.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by mhays

Five years ago, tents were relatively rare. Today they're everywhere. This was a coordinated campaign. It might have been with good intentions, but it might have also had a "now they'll be more visible" component.

I remember lots of tents at the peak of the last boom around 2000.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

^^^ i just see it as lazy policy. democrats run one single play when it comes to raising money....raising taxes.

Obama didn't raise taxes. Bush I raised taxes. The last NYC mayor to raise taxes was a Republican.

Both parties love to spend money. You see that in the absurdly irresponsible federal budget. They just like spending money on different things.

There is a breed of extremist no tax/no spend (except on corporate welfare) Republicans in places like Kansas and Oklahoma, but they don't seem to be relevant nationally.

[skyscraper]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Obama didn't raise taxes. Bush I raised taxes.

Presidents don't raise taxes, congress does. there was a democrat party majority in congress when Bush I was president, and there was a republican majority for much of when Obama was president.

Originally Posted by Crawford

There is a breed of extremist no tax/no spend (except on corporate welfare) Republicans in places like Kansas and Oklahoma, but they don't seem to be relevant nationally.

deplorables, right?

[10023]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

^^^ i just see it as lazy policy. democrats run one single play when it comes to raising money....raising taxes.

Well, taxes are how governments raise money. There isn’t another play.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by skyscraper

deplorables, right?

No, it's not really related to Trump and his Deplorables. Trump's first budget is quite profligate. Reps generally spend like Dems.

The Rand Paul deficit hawk niche is pretty small.

[ThrashATL]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No, it's not really related to Trump and his Deplorables. Trump's first budget is quite profligate. Reps generally spend like Dems.

The Rand Paul deficit hawk niche is pretty small.

Too bad it's not huge because we're headed for a cancerous death as a nation with our spending.

[Double L]

With how high of taxes they have on businesses, a whole lot more people will be homeless.