Ballmer, Bezos Fund Effort To Undermine Bill Gates

theodp writes "You know what they say — it takes money to avoid paying money. TechFlash reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos have contributed $100,000 each to an effort to defeat an income tax on individuals in Washington state making more than $200,000. The backers of Initiative 1098, which is set for the November ballot, include Bill Gates (Sr.), who has emerged as one of the most vocal proponents of the income tax. Under the proposal, which has drawn the ire of the Bezos and Ballmer-backed Defeat 1098, no tax would be due on the first $200K of income, 5% tax would be owed on income between $200K and $500K, and everything above $500K would be subject to a 9% tax (cutoffs are doubled for joint returns)."

Comments

Re:Seattle COL

[SirGeek]

If you live in the metro, own a home, and your wife stays at home with the kids - making $200,000 hardly qualifies you as "rich". Especially if you are a small business owner.

From the Summary:

(cutoffs are doubled for joint returns).

The way I take this is they'd have to make 400K before they hit the tax.

WA has the most regressive tax in the nation

[GayBliss]

In Washington state currently, people earning less than $20,000 pay 17.3% in taxes. People earning over $537,000 pay just 2.9%

Even with this law, the richest will be paying less as a percentage of income than the poorest in the state.

This study (pdf) gives the numbers.

Re:This is a STATE tax, not a federal tax

[tomhudson]

Most taxes go to pay the salaries of government employees, who are certainly not poor.

The #1 use of your taxes is war and it's consequences, or here, or the interactive chart.

Historical US tax rates were up to 92%

[catchblue22]

The top American marginal income rates from 1944 to 1963 were 92%. Yes, 92% of income made over the top amount, went to taxation. In 1944, if you made over $200,000, 92% went to the government. In 1963, it was $400,000. And yet, this was a period of profound economic expansion and middle class comfort. Kind of makes you want to question the "conventional wisdom" that all taxes are bad.

This is a list of American historical tax rates: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history-june2010.pdf