AND bring in more homeless...
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 ...
These guys are the laughing stock.
Wreck economy, causing home prices to collapse, making homes affordable for everyone, ending homelessness. Problem solved! Of course, then there’s joblessness, but let’s solve one problem at a time, shall we?
Seattle’s answer to homelessness:
Hurt the economy.
Well, maybe that will lower housing prices.
Amazon has ruled out flyover for HQ2. Considering Amazon is still considering bids from Maryland, DC AND Northern Virgnia, they have not figured out their stupid mistake yet. Perhaps they will choose Columbus although that is certainly not real flyover. They still have Newark on their list but I doubt they are that stupid.
All of my life I have been told :
DO NOT feed feral cats-—they will multiply.
What exactly is the difference with this ‘homeless’ problem ???
The intentions are not good. They are the usual malicious Communist anti-capitalism cloaked in phony do-gooder “good feelings.” Most of the money raised will not help anyone except the Communists at the top.
Businesses don’t pay tax. It’s an expense that is passed on to the consumer. This is a direct head tax and easy to calculate into their product/service pricing.
“Could”? Try “will”.
Although all nine Seattle City council people voted for this atrocity, he can be laid at the feet of one council member in particular: Socialist Kshama Sawant. That woman needs to be removed from the country with prejudice.
Yeah, I read that Fairfax, and DC are both still under consideration. I can’t imagine the idiots repeating the same mistake as Seattle. They even suggest downtown Atlanta is on the list.
The very notion of taxing businesses for every full time person they hire is so stupid I’m not sure even Marx would approve.
Like any corporate tax, it will just get shoved down onto the employees.
It’s funny, because the first colonists here in the US ran it like a commune. It didn’t take long before starvation set in, because the takers started vastly outnumbering the doers.
It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat this experiment, there will always be someone arrogant and narcissistic enough to try it again.
USSR, People’s Republic, Vietnam, Cuba... it shouldn’t ne necessary at this point to remind anyone of the egregious failures of Marxist states.
well right after $15 per hour minimum wage fiasco, they had to think of another idiotic plan for more taxes....liberalism is a mental disorder
They mandated government-controlled price caps for imported gasoline. Their fuel has to be shipped in by boat. They didn't cap prices at the pump however so service station owners charged whatever they wanted. Oil companies raised their prices to the maximum allowed under the caps but this still wasn't up high enough to compete in the free market.
Not only did prices at the pump go up instead of down, but the gasoline supplies started to slow down, as oil companies realized they weren't going to be paid market prices for their products.
Why sell to Hawaii for less if they could sell anywhere else for more? Simple economics.
Well, it only took the dumb liberals running the show 8 months to stop the program in its tracks in spring of 2006 before anymore damage was done.
A classic unforced error by the democRAT-led government. Unintended consequences is the only outcome liberals know.
They will be writing about this big failure in free-market economic understanding in college business textbooks for years to come.
This tax is based on the number of employees in a business, but they don't bear the expense themselves.
Corporate taxes are passed through and paid by the customers in the form of higher prices for the companies goods and services. Corporations don't actually pay taxes themselves.
What this head tax will probably result in, is companies hiring fewer employees, laying off some existing employees, turning some current employees into independent contractors so they're not actually employed by the company directly and companies downsizing and/or relocating to other locales less onerous financially.
Liberals think they are smarter than anyone else and their ideas on how to squeeze more money out of the population is so inventive. They're not. What they need to learn is basic economics instead of Marxism.
Economics is like a hydraulic system. Push down on something here and something goes up over there. It is not static system. It is dynamic.
The government thinks everything will stay the same so they'll raise revenue.
What they don't factor in, is that those on the other end, businesses and consumers, change their behavior to deal with what the government has done which usually results in less revenue.
And that, in a nutshell, is what causes unintended consequences of feel good ideas instituted by the Left.
Since its a head tax on employees, this provides Seattle based companies every incentive to kill off jobs in Seattle and move them to lower cost states. You already see this in Wells Fargo for example. Their HQ is still in San Francisco but far from moving things from Charlotte to San Francisco when they acquired Wachovia, they’ve instead been moving more jobs/functions to Charlotte. The costs to them are lower and since the cost of living is lower, they can actually get people to work for them who would never be willing to come to San Francisco - at least not for what Wells can pay to live there.
why don’t cities and other cabals approach their need for money in the correct way?....stop spending...stop ridiculous contracts and if the unions don’t allow it, then stop hiring and close down depts....
Democrat “Head Tax” on a Homeless Person.
Democrat “Head Tax” on a working person to make him Homeless.
Repeat.
AND bring in more homeless...
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