Posted on 07/06/2020 10:00:21 AM PDT by Zenyatta
After years of trying to mine the wealthy around here, and instead hitting themselves in the face, the Seattle City Council has finally fixed on a potent way to tax the rich.
Seattle’s latest corporate tax scheme will almost certainly run into some familiar obstacles, such as a skeptical mayor and a possible legal challenge from big business.
But politically, this one is nothing like the failures of the past.
It’s the work of Council member Teresa Mosqueda, and the premise is simple enough: Instead of tilting at windmills to try to tax wealth or high incomes, which is legally questionable in our backward state, this plan instead puts a levy on high employee salaries and compensation packages.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
The trouble with morons (democrats and apparently the author of this egregious form of legalized plunder) is that they don’t know they’re morons. (Dunning Kruger) The moron first decides that people making more money don’t deserve it. Then looks for a way to steal it without the risk of getting shot or going to jail. Third she assumes that the rich will simply throw up heir hands and say yes - take my assets that I worked my ass off for. Easy solution is for them to move out of the jurisdiction. next is to take legal action. Third is to take condign second amendment action. This while being especially satisfying is probably a waste of time, since this moron presumably represents the attitudes of the morons who elected her and will just be replaced by another moron who thinks the same way.
It’s an income tax. They will need to change the state constitution as step one.
Correction. If they are basically taxing the business on the money they SPEND that is sort of a sales tax. I can see several outcomes:
1. avoid giving people raises that cross a line into a tax level.
2. move their location outside the city limits
3. Encourage WFH outside the city limits. This is easy with the push for it caused by the virus.
This is an easy one for companies to avoid though I can see it hitting Amazon for a while. They need to create a site outside of Seattle as the “official” location for all WFH employees to hotel. And move their corporate out of Seattle like Boeing did decades ago.
It will become a town of under $150k employees.
Not that I agree with the concept, but what is wrong with a simple income tax for wages earned within the city limits?
These games have all been tried before! And, obviously, proponents never want to look at the locations where the schemes were tried.
They are trying to say it is “Not” an income tax because the earner is not paying it, but the payer is. It’s just legally pretzelizing the whole thing.
All they have to do is get the voters to pass the concept of an income tax, at any low level, then they can just raise it at will. But out of human decency they should leave the voters enough to be able to afford the KY jelly to reduce the pain.
The idea that Amazon/Bezos is “libertarian” is asinine. Leftists are so stupid with their definitions. All they have is cheap slogans and buzzwords for anything they are opposed too.
Check out what the income tax rate was in the US in the beginning - and who they taxed.
Talk about your slippery slope. ;)
This virus as really brought out the point that many of us can work from about anywhere. They just move these workers beyond the money hooks of the city and move the company HQ to Texas and bingo now these workers are not paying one damn dime to Seattle, nor is the company.
Working with big business is a lot more productive than trying to play the communist/socialist game of lie about then screw the big guys.
The city income tax that I am subjected to hasn’t changed in the 30+ years that I’ve worked in that city.
My STATE income tax rate, on the other hand...
Lets look at it this way. Its like Robinhood. Except that Seattle’s Robinhood lives in a big mansion next to the big mansions of his merry men, the city employees and vendors. They take from the rich, and everyone else through sales tax and property taxes. Then they give a few coins to the poor. The rest stays in Robinhood’s pockets so he can buy another crystal chandelier for the mansion’s dining hall.
The City of Seattle is far richer than most cities. Its lucky to have large successful businesses move to the rainy corner of the country. And those business’ stay there because there is no income tax. As soon as that stops, you can expect an executive office for Amazon and Starbucks to be built just outside of Seattle. And if not there, then in Texas or Florida, two wealth states with no income tax.
Seattle’s good fortune to have such large profitable business’ has burdened it with a very expensive local government that feeds on the taxes and fees it generates from these companies.
KuhRayZee...
Leftist hack women run Seattle. How’s that holy diversity estrogen factor working out for them? Conservative women need not apply.
They should be honest and just call it the Envy Tax.
Yes, to echo the others, what the author means by “backward” state is that Washington doesn’t have a state income tax. The libs have tried one ploy after another over the decades to institute one, and anyone who believes this will only apply to “the wealthy” is impossibly naive. And what the author means by “potent” is that once in place it can be ratcheted however a money-hungry progressive government desires.
I would really like to see some kind of retail sales tax to replace income tax. If money is spent in the state, a tax should be paid. Individual wealth and/or income should not be a direct factor.
To the person advocating the tax:
Your self-induced poverty and bureaucratic insanity are not to problem of productive people.
Seattle's leftist policies are the direct cause of its problems.
We will not bail you out of your insanity.
I’m looking forward to all the Amazon and Starbucks executives willingly paying this tax. Heck, they should voluntarily pay 10 times the amount to prove their leftist credentials.
Why any American State would permit a municipality to tax income is baffling. I am continually shocked at the level of power that municipalities have in the US compared with Canada. Municipalities should be limited to police, fire, road repair, garbage collection, water and sewage, building permits, and parks.
Texas has a few old SAC bases that Boing can move into. And Paccar is already established there.
They can keep the burnt coffee.
I have an interview Wednesday for some computer software work in Seattle. I live in Buffalo, NY and I can work for half what they are paying them in Seattle, and be very happy.
You can buy a nice 3 bedroom house here on a quarter acre of land for about 100 to 150K. 4 bedroom on half acre for < 200K.
The base maryland rate at the time was 6%. so essentially it doubled the tax rate for high income people. When the law was passed there were a little over 3,000 people in the state that fell into this category and the MD comptroller said "They'll just have to grin and bear it." The following year there were only 1000 people in the state who fell into this category because of moves income shielding ets.
So lets look at what the rapacious greed of maryland politicians yielded. Lets suppose that those over a million had an average actual income of $2 million so they would have paid to the state 3000*.06*$2,000,000 = $360 million. Now look at the result after the plunder tax was passed: 1000*.12*1000= $240 million The greedy thieves in the state legislature (heavily Democrat majority) ended up losing $120 million because the were so stupid as to think that the victims were just going to "grin and bear it."
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