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Seattle City Council Unanimously Approves Income Tax For the Rich (geekwire.com)
reifman writes: Amazon, tech employees and those making $250,000 or more annually in Seattle will now pay a 2.25 percent income tax. "The Seattle City Council estimates that the tax would bring in an additional $140 million each year," reports GeekWire. "The revenue would go toward the city's housing affordability agenda and carbon reduction goals and supplant federal funds if they are cut. The revenue is also intended to alleviate the burden of Washington's property and sales taxes, which are often called the most regressive in the country." Anyone who's seen Amazon's impacts on Seattle and its low and middle income residents will appreciate how this tax will help the homeless, lower income and improve the environment. Not everyone is thrilled with the recently approved legislation. Jason Mercier, who directs the center for government reform with the Washington Police Center, said: "[The council is] going to unanimously adopt an illegal income tax that has no hope of taking effect and will waste taxpayer resources on litigation the city is sure to lose." The measure is expected to be challenged in court, as Washington's constitution states "a county, city, or city-county shall not levy a tax on net income." According to The Washington Post, Mercier said there is decade of case law saying that a graduated income tax is unconstitutional because income is property and under the constitution, property tax has to be taxed uniformly and no more than 1 percent.
MOST large cities have an income tax.
I don't see rich people fleeing Chicago or NYC.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The relevant sections are on pages 26 and 27 of the Constitution's text, available online here:
http://leg.wa.gov/lawsandagencyrules/documents/12-2010-wastateconstitution.pdf
Specifically (italics mine):
There follows three long passages describing the conditions under which such a "taxing district" may exceed the 1% aggregate taxation limit defined previously on page 26. Whether Seattle's particular circumstances meet those conditions, I have no particular comment. I post this merely to point out that Seattle, as a city government, does have a constitutionally viable mechanism for imposing its own tax scheme.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It's been years, but I believe NYC has an income tax.
Ages ago, I worked on payroll software in NYC. Of course, to test that I was doing things correctly, I used my own paycheck. I couldn't get it to balance out. Turned out my boss was taking NYC taxes out, even though I didn't actually live in NYC (I lived out on Long Island and took the train in). She calculated everything out for my co-worker, who lived in the city, and then just used the same numbers for me (since we were paid the same).
He was a little annoyed when I got a "raise" and he didn't...
*Most* americans live paycheck to paycheck and are vastly in debt
This is true, but except at the very bottom it has almost nothing to do with income. Plenty of people making >$250K also live paycheck to paycheck and are vastly in debt. Whether or not you're living at the edge of your finances has much less to do with how much money you earn than it does how you spend. I know families of six that live on $25K annually and have money in the bank and no debt other than the mortgage on their (old and very small) house. I know DINKs that have combined incomes of $400K annually but every cent is pre-spent, and any unexpected expenses go on credit cards. There's a *huge* difference in the way those people live; the difference is larger than $375K per year, because the former live below their meager means while the latter live above their ample means.
Being rich or poor is somewhat determined by choices and effort, but mostly determined by luck. Living paycheck to paycheck, however, is almost always due to choices. Note that I said "almost", because there are exceptions; cases where people who do live below their means get slammed with some impossible expense (e.g. medical expenses) which sucks up their savings and leaves them with unmanageable payments, perhaps garnished from their wages. There are also people who live on disability income which will evaporate if they save any money (stupid, stupid policy). But *most* Americans who live paycheck to paycheck do it by choice, though few of them believe it. But have them sit down with a decent financial planner who will help them identify where their money goes, optimize it (which may involve moving, since many are house-poor), and create a budget that enables them to save, and they can stop living that way.
Personally, I used to live paycheck to paycheck, on a $100K income, until I realized that I was being stupid and took control. Granted that it's a lot easier to take control of your finances with $100K income than with $25K income but it's totally possible for the vast majority even at the bottom end of that range. There is a point below which living just about becomes impossible, of course.
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Because the sure fire way to up your standard of living is under Socialism right?
I don't know that it's clear which is ultimately better; the modern form of socialism (which is capitalism with a strong safety net funded by heavy taxation), or something closer to pure capitalism (pure capitalism exists nowhere). My suspicion is that both approaches work, but which will work in a given country depends on the local culture.
Talk to a Fin, German, or Swede about their great economic mobility opportunities. (real people, not fabricated media reports).
That's stupid. If you want to know about such things, you don't seek out anecdotes, which may tell you very different things depending on whom you encounter, you look for data. Common measures of economic mobility put Swedes, to pick one country, far above Americans. Some more recent research questions those measures which focus only on single-generation changes and look at multi-generational mobility. By those measures, Swedes have roughly the same level of economic mobility as Americans. I don't see any data that indicates they have less mobility than Americans.
That said, I strongly suspect that a regional analysis of the US would yield a different result, because we know very well that mobility varies greatly across different regions of the country. https://www.theatlantic.com/bu.... Perhaps people in Salt Lake City (per that 2014 study, the city with highest upward mobility for moving into the middle class) or San Jose (the city with the highest upward mobility for moving into the top quintile) are significantly more upwardly mobile that people in Stockholm (or whatever Swedish city has the highest mobility). I haven't found any studies that apply the same measurement techniques to make comparison feasible (and even then such things are tricky). But, as a nation, the US is no more mobile than Sweden, and probably somewhat less, which means that extensive safety nets don't kill mobility, and their absence doesn't guarantee it.
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