Posted on 07/11/2017 3:14:56 PM PDT by Renkluaf
(Newser) – Supporters waved "Tax the Rich" signs Monday as Seattle's city council voted unanimously to do exactly that. By a vote of 9-0, the council approved an income tax that only applies to wealthy residents, with the 2.25% tax starting at income above $250,000 for individuals and above $500,000 for married couples filing joint returns, the Seattle Times reports. The city estimates that the tax will raise around $140 million a year from Seattle's 20,000 or so wealthiest residents. Washington state doesn't have a personal income tax and a 1984 law bans cities and counties in the state from taxing net income, meaning Seattle's move is certain to face legal challenges, the AP reports.
Opponents vowed to fight the measure, with Washington State Republican Party Chair Susan Hutchison urging citizens to "forcefully resist" the tax and not pay a penny. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he'll sign the measure into law Friday—and he will welcome legal challenges. The goal is to replace the current "regressive" tax system with a fairer one, "while ensuring Seattle stands up to President Trump's austere budget that cuts transportation, affordable housing, health care, and social services," the mayor tells Reuters. (Illinois has ended its long budget standoff with a 32% hike in the income tax rate.)
I doubt it. This is a city tax. They’ll just move to the ‘burbs.
Just to name a few
Oops didn’t carry the Decimal Point - Tax Paid on Howards full income - $93,750. Point is NOT TRIVIAL ... look for the exodus.
Let's look at how Connecticut is faring after tax increases in 2010, 2012, and 2016.
Several thousand tax filers in the state have adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million a year, and they account for about a third of all income tax receipts.
The New England state faces a budget deficit of $400 million ..."About $200 million of the drop in receipts came from the state’s closely watched top 100 earners, who are the source of an outsize proportion of the state’s revenue,” the WSJ reports.
Decades ago I lived in Bremerton, across the Puget Sound from seattle. The space needle was the tallest and coolest. The city was pleasantly clean and pike street market had everything imaginable for sale.
The big picture is once they fleece the rich, they will come after all of Washington State's citizens who are productive enough to stay off welfare. This economic model will create more poverty as it destroys both the job market and the job suppliers. It is an economic death spiral.
This is not a tax on the ultra-rich because none of them live within the city....they live in Medina, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Vashion Island and Bainbridge Island.
If you wanted to define this crowd affected, it’s mostly the BMW-type crowd....thirty to forty-five years old...and living in condos around the city. Anyone making a million a year...doesn’t live in the city.
All this will do is drive this crowd to exit the inner city, and also relocate on the islands or into Bellevue. It’ll take less than a week to think over the implications. I doubt if the political guys even read or understood what they were given....probably created by the real estate crowd to hype up movement and trigger urban decay within Seattle itself.
“The city estimates that the tax will raise around $140 million a year “
It won’t come close to that. It never does.
L
I can remember at time when Seattle (King County) was a Republican county. Reagan carried it twice, as did Nixon. Ford carried it as well.
Now its a toilet, like most of America largest cities (where Democrats reign heavy.
The old saying is “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”.
I don’t know who is dumber—the lefties supporting and voting for the tax or the high income people who still live in Seattle.
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