Posted on 05/18/2018 7:03:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In a shortsighted effort to fight homelessness, Seattle’s city council has approved a new employee “head tax” on companies based in the city. The policy pits growth and progress against each other in a zero-sum game that will do far more harm than good.
The head tax is exactly what it sounds like: a straight levy of $0.14 per hour per employee—about $275 a year for a full-time worker—targeting every business in Seattle with revenues of $20 million or more. The proposal’s backers aim to raise around $48 million per year to fund various affordable housing initiatives in order to combat homelessness and provide low-income families with affordable options in the city.
These are laudable aims, but it’s hard to imagine a more destructive strategy for realizing them. The potential damage to Seattle’s economy from this blunt instrument runs into the billions of dollars. Some may believe that California businesses could still flee their high-tax environment for Seattle, but in reality, Seattle is competing with many other cities for this income. One example is Phoenix, which has posted the best income growth of any Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA) since 1992. Phoenix has capitalized on its proximity to California by luring businesses and people with a low-tax environment that nets them $1,539 in income every single minute. Compared to Seattle, this is nearly $1,200 more per minute, or $70,348 more per day. The numbers are staggering, and Seattle can’t risk putting itself further behind.
Seattle’s $20 million benchmark for the new tax refers to gross receipts, not income, meaning it will hit high-volume, low-margin businesses (think grocery stores or construction wholesalers) just as hard as more lucrative counterparts, promising price increases for consumers as businesses pass along costs. Service industries with big headcounts are firmly in the crosshairs,
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
Good intentions. Good feelings. Unintended consequences.
Time for Seattle’s companies to move out!
Salt Lake City tried somting like this. They needed more money (as always) so they raised the parking meter rates. Turns our people don’t like to pay for parking so not only did the amount raised from parking meters not go up, it actually went down. And the shoppers? They stayed away so sales tax revenue went down too.
Liberals cannot do otherwise. They should all be given their own island and a lot of pot. No possibility of going back to the mainland. Ever.
You don’t want to be around when politicians go into a feeding frenzy. They are much worse than piranha and nowhere near as discerning
Please have your company in our city, and hire lots of local people, for which we will then punish you by taxing you extra for every single local person you hire.
Sincerely,
The Dumbest Economic Policy Since Property Tax Was Instituted
Good plan.
I live outside Seattle and usually work in the city. I do not agree with the head tax but some big companies have created needless congestion in Seattle, most notably Amazon. There is no reason that a company that is not brick and mortar should be sprawling through the city.
There are better areas for Amazon to locate to the south most notably. Amazon employees are very well paid and many live in Seattle. If they were not in the city the rent prices would fall and more of the currently homeless could afford lodging
This solution, of course, would not provide a giant slush fund for the city to skim from as this head tax does.
Amazon plans to rent out portions of its new high rise building.
Perfect place for hundreds of government bow-wows to look after this tax collection.
One of several reasons I moved from Seattle. They would tax the very air you breath if they could.
This just proves, once again, that EVERYTHING totalitarian socialist/communists wish to “redistribute” is produced by capitalism.
Totalitarian socialism/communism can only exist as a parasite of a capitalist host.
Once a parasite reaches critica mass, both the host and parasite die.
Just part of the Democrats plans to tax free enterprise into government control.
That may be part of it, but the bigger issue is the city of Seattle rolling out the red carpet for the homeless. Most of them are mentally l, drug addicts, or young anti-social transients that move north and south following good weather like geese. While there may be a few that can’t afford housing due to the cost, that is not the main issue. The city enables these people.
Liberals are so compassionate, with other people’s money.
ping
I think if Amazon had grasped it’s growth and impact....they would have selected some place thirty miles outside of Kansas City or Nashville to begin with.
I think part of this search for the second facility....will end up being an attempt to grow the facility, and take 50-percent of the Seattle ‘core’ out. It wouldn’t surprise me if in ten years...Amazon-Seattle is about 10-percent of it’s current size, and some third Amazon facility is built on the east coast.
Raising taxes or regulations to aid a struggling economy is like aiding a drowning man by handing him an anchor.
They’re not “fighting homelessness,” they’re manufacturing more.
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