Seattle repeals tax on companies like Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Seattle repeals tax on companies like Amazon

apnews.com

26 pointsuptown16 comments

Good, this was a terrible choice made by an inept city council without the backing of the people. Other ways need to be explored before throwing more money at the system. Now people need to actually work on the problem instead of fundraising.

Without the backing of the people? Can you cite evidence of this? Also, why was it a terrible choice?

I keep hearing this same exact argument parroted everywhere from Twitter, Facebook, to now HN.

Because it wasn't voted on [by the people], the council just came up with it and voted themselves (a whole 9 people). Enough people signed the petition recently to make it come to a vote, hence them repealing it today - because the people didn't want it.

The signatures would've created a referendum to vote on it in November. Now there is no chance to vote on it. Also, the city council is voted in by the people as representatives -- it's literally how our "democracy" works.

Canvassers even lied to people to get them to sign. No surprise from scummy business owners like Saul Spady of Dicks Burgers who now enjoys a booming restaurant industry after campaigning AGAINST the $15 min wage. That guy is truly a dick.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/06/27190451/audio-a...

Raising money to help the homeless is needed, but I really don't understand why Seattle felt it needed an extra tax on businesses. In my mind:

1. Cost of living and property values go up in the city

2. Higher property values mean more property taxes go into the coffer

3. Spend some of that money on helping those negatively effected by rising cost of living and property value

Instead Seattle wanted both the extra property tax income and an extra business tax. Seems sketchy to me. Where is all that property tax money going and how much is being wasted that they can't put together $48 million to help the homeless?

Especially when the city is already going to be raising property taxes even more on top of the added base value of the properties. In some places the property tax is going up as much as 30% and on average 17% in 2018! King County is going to get $5.6 billion in property tax in 2018. In comparison $48 million is a tiny number.

It's also "a tiny number" to the big businesses. Why resist paying it so strongly? It probably doesn't seem like such a tiny number if you're homeless.

"It's OK to throw away money because a big business can afford it" is not a very compelling argument. If an increase in property tax is more than enough to cover it, what reason would you have to collect the business tax other than to spite the companies that are affected by it?

It's nothing to do with spite nor is it throwing money away. It's about redirecting money from some of the richest companies in the world to help people who have nothing.

Why would you put the taxes on the people instead of the businesses over $20 mil in revenue making record profits? It makes no sense. We have enough regressive taxes.

Higher property values (overall) doesn't necessarily mean more property taxes go into the coffer. Higher specific property values (relative to your neighbors) means you pay a larger slice of the pie. Though Seattle going up even faster than the rest of the market certainly helps conflate the two, the total tax burden is somewhat fixed in dollar amount (at the state or county level, I don't remember which), so if everybody's property values go up uniformly 10% each, everybody's taxes only go up by the actual tax revenue increase for that year (typically much lower than 10%). What really gets you is if your property value goes up faster than the average at the county/state level.

Hmm I understand what you are saying. However, as you said the overall tax revenue increase is definitely happening, conflating the two.

In 2017 the county made $4.8 billion in property taxes, and in 2018 it will be $5.6 billion. So they are already getting $800 million more in property taxes in 2018. That's a lot more money. It just feels like they don't want to spend the extra money they're already getting effectively, and instead want to ask for more on top.

This is depressing. We can't even get $275 per full-time worker each year (previously reduced from $500) from some of the worlds richest companies to pay towards the homelessness situation they have helped create. Jeff Bezos wants to build houses on the Moon. How about helping out here on Earth first.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/03/bezos_billions_spac...

Absolutely depressing. It sets a precedent that businesses own this city and can control everything. This was a tax of something like 0.2% on Uwajimaya and Dicks Burgers and only effected companies making $20mil+ in revenue and only impacted their Seattle workers. It wasn't a tax on individuals, it wasn't coming out of individuals paychecks.

While I fully agree that the city should've had a detailed plan for where this money was going to effectively help the homeless/low income, do people really think these companies would have just been like "yeah, this looks good" and cut a check annually? No.

This is a sad outcome for the city of Seattle in my opinion. The sky didn't fall after the $15 minimum wage passed, and it didn't fall after the head tax was originally passed a month ago.

I think economists generally agree that a flat per-head tax is regressive and bad policy.

If you're going to tax workers, why not a progressive income tax?

This is a tax on the company. This is not a direct tax on workers. A flat tax on people I agree is bad policy. This is not that. It isn't even a flat tax on companies as requires the company to have a large minimum amount of revenue.

Increased tax on large profitable companies in another form would also be fine.

The thing is, it wasn't taxing workers. It was taxing businesses. This was _not_ coming out of workers paychecks. Income tax is illegal per the WA state constitution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com