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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.
In 10 years, the Seattle City council will complain about the impact of commuters on its road infrastructure, with larger and larger numbers of tech workers living outside the city where they are not subjects to Seattle taxes
lucm, indeed.
I mean where I live you are happy to get 50% of your income after tax.
Worth noting that according to Source Watch, the Washington Policy Center receives funding from the Koch brothers and pushes agenda items from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the state.. Take that as you will per your political leanings.
is all in favor of local government right up until they do something they don't like. Then they want the State gov't to step in and outlaw it. The State gov'ts seem about perfect. Big enough to oppress but not so big they can't just buy them all out.
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It is legal for many cities to collect income tax--you are right, many cities do that. But not in Washington state, because the state constitution expressly prohibits it.
It is absolutely legal for a city to collect income tax. MANY cities do just that.
You missed the part about the Washington State Constitution banning city income taxes. NY City is not in Washington.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
This is ridiculous, how pampered are you? $100k might be pushing it, but $250k for an INDIVIDUAL is most definitely "rich", and if you feel threatened by it, good.
Washington's constitution states "a county, city, or city-county shall not levy a tax on net income."
Hope the rich enjoy their tax being based on gross income. Those 'tax writeoffs'? Not so writeoff-able anymore. No response to the 'income is actually property' precedent except "bullshit!".
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
$250K is plenty. I make half that, and live in the Seattle area, and I'm quite comfortable. Big house, 3 cars, 2 kids in private school. By the standards of a spoiled brat I'm just middle-class, but by any sane definition, I'm well-off. $250K a year in Seattle is rich, and anyone who says otherwise just needs to adjust their expectations.
Why good? Are you saying he didn't earn that money?
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."
Yeah, that was my first thought, when did $250K a year define you as rich?
In *every* part of the US, that will define you as rich. If you can afford a $50,000 car, you are rich. If you can afford a 2000+ sqft home, you are rich. If you can afford to buy a decaf latte grande every day, you are rich. *Most* americans live paycheck to paycheck and are vastly in debt. Slashdotters are not typical people. Moreover, most slashdotters don't even know anyone who isn't rich. They will live in a rich neighborhood, and work with rich people, and buy everything online, or from stores staffed by the children of rich people. On the rare occasion when they do go into a walmart, they look at the cashier with pitty thinking that these are the only poor people. They never see the 5,000 people who would kill just to get that walmart job. They never see the people working the warehouse jobs, or the folks living in the places where you joke about being unsafe to drive at night. They simply don't understand that their world is the exception not the rule.
The other side of that are the working class and poor. They know the rich exist, but they never see them, they never get to go into those neighborhoods. Their kids don't go to the same schools with the rich kids so they never have a reason to meet with the rich parents at PTA meetings (assuming they could even get enough time off work to go).
The simple truth is there are two Americas. There is the one you live in, and the one they live in. I sincerely hope you never have to live in their world because it is a pale shadow of the America you live in. In spite of that fact, their lifes work means you can get your stuff cheap online and in store. They buy the products that directly or indirectly fund your huge paychecks. In a very real sense, they are very nearly modern day slaves who's entire existences fuels your lifestyle.
The average American watching TV is looking at a lifestyle that is beyond their own. They can only aspire to have the kind of wealth they see on their nightly sitcoms and dramas, but they watch anyways always dreaming that they live those lives instead of their own.
I could give you a million places to look where you could peel back the veil of abject poverty and see the new slave class this country has embraced, but it is probably better that you continue to live the fantasy so that you can pursue the things that just might actually make a better tomorrow for everyone. If you had to face the demons that comes with your own wealth, it might destroy the fragile innocence that allows you to sleep at night.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
What I'd want to know that the article doesn't state is whether that's a marginal tax, or a total tax.
When it comes to federal income tax at least, the rates are all marginal. The top tax rate is 39.6%, but that doesn't mean if you make $500k you're paying 39.6% of that. Rather, you only pay 39.6% of everything you make over the limit. You'd pay 10% on the first $9325, 15% on $9326 to $37,950, etc etc on up the scale. You only pay 39.6% of the last $81,599, since the 39.6% kicks in at $418401+ (as of 2017 at least).
So if it's 2.25% of everything over 250k, that's not going to kill anyone making that sort of money, because the guy making $251k owes exactly $22.50.
when you vote for socialists/communists you get your money stolen. Have fun.
Democrats steal from the rich and give it to themselves
Republicans on the other hand, steal from the poor and give it to themselves
Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter, we've all been had.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Income is "property"? I thought it was the state next door that had legal cannabis.
Sounds like there's a whole slew of existing laws that counter this new one, but equating a cash flow with static assets makes the "corporations are people" concept seem downright pedestrian. At least corporations do some of the same things that people do, even if the State of Texas has yet to administer lethal injections to one.
It's not rich. RIch people don't have to work. That's rich. Rich people have people to do their yards, clean their pool, cook their food, clean their houses and drive them where they want to go in a car that cost more than I'll make in my lifetime. That's rich. 250K is living comfortably with no worries.
I live in Seattle. You can debate the merits of having an income tax, or not. But you'd have to be an outright moron to think they would keep the threshold at $250K. Now they're saying "we'll have an income tax at $250K, we'll solve the homeless problem with the money". In 4 years, homeless issue will be worse, and they'll say "we'll make it $175K and we'll solve the homeless problem". 4 more years, "Let's make it $100K and we'll solve the homeless problem". Once the mechanism is in place they (the gummint) won't be able to control themselves.
Because the sure fire way to up your standard of living is under Socialism right? If you had not noticed, that only works in rare cases with certain people in power. Didn't work out well for most of the world, and sure as hell keeps people wanting to move out of even the best of the socialist countries. Talk to a Fin, German, or Swede about their great economic mobility opportunities. (real people, not fabricated media reports).
Notice that there is no mention of "local" Government in our founding documents or our Constitution. Pushing to re-establish the Constitution is what the majority of people (read Not Politicians) want. This does put more power back into the State, where it was meant to be concentrated. It is much easier for the populace to have control over their State Government. The State is supposed to be a higher authority than a city/local Government.
If your State does not address the issue, it's not magically a Federal issue. It remains a local/city issue. When the majority of people in that income range move and the city loses all that magical revenue they spent, you can vote them out and put in fiscally responsible politicians.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's marginal. Here's an article with a bit more detail
So yeah, Mr. $251k owes $22.50.
Residents of Seattle city proper? Or those who work and earn income within the city? Either way, this will end badly.
I neither work in, nor live in Seattle. But I do live nearby. I wouldn't put it past Seattle to demand income data (and tax returns filed) by everyone living in the region. Just to make sure that a few of the 'evil 1%' aren't trying to slip through the cities tax net with a suburban PO box.
And I see the state being a big pussy and backing Seattle's data demands. To date, I have no obligation to report my income to any Washington State entity, as we have no state income tax. I see this ending. And I see a bunch of local politicians mouths watering when they see the spreadsheet calculations of what they could be taking.
Have gnu, will travel.
*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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Its really depends on your lifestyle and how good you are with your money. Factors, like kids, marriages, do you need new shit all the time, are you a compulsive buyer or are you complete coal smuggler.
I've found that how you spend ends up dictating your financial situation almost as much as your salary.
Given the tax is on individuals I imagine $250k would easily place you in the top 1%.
Using a very conservative assumption that the highest Seattle income is $250k;
- Seattle population: 705,000
- Estimated new tax revenue: $140,000,000
- New tax rate: 2.5%
140,000,000 / ( 250,000 * 0.025 ) = 22,400 people earning $250k
22,400 / 705,000 = 3.2% of the population
Thanks for the link.
District of Columbia – 4% on the first $10,000, 6% between $10,000 and $40,000, and 8.5% over $40,000
I guess in that instance it's poetic justice, since so many people in DC feed at the public trough. They're basically just a digestive system transforming federal taxpayer money into municipal taxpayer money, removing 91.5% of the value in the process.
lucm, indeed.
So, if that is your definition of "rich", what do you define Warren Buffet and Bill Gates as? Because I assure you their lifestyles are way different than a 2000+ sqft home and a latte every day.
No, there's in fact alot more Americas then that, but for some reason you people just love forgetting an actual "rich" exists, by calling most of the working class "rich" and just lumping in the billionaires, as if those two classes are even remotely comparable.
Your math is very wrong. FTFA: 10k ppl=$140m, that is 14,000 per person, averaged. Said another way, 250,000*.0225=$5625.
Are you completely ignoring the fact that this discussion thread right here is about the tax being marginal?
The only way it makes any sense to calculate 2.25% of 250K is if someone makes $500K, so they make 250K over the threshold.
The average 14K pp estimate suggests that the average wage they're looking at is 14,000/.0225 = ~620K ABOVE the 250K threshold, so $870K/yr.
The trouble is that those on the low end INVARIABLY end up with some huge and impossible expense. Because life just throws that shit at people. And when you've never earned enough to cover more than the basics, saving money has never really been an option - and the expenses that dumb luck throws your way are usually bigger than you could ever possibly cover with those savings, so debt becomes the only option - and even those who had spent years or decades being responsible are driven to abject poverty by dumb luck.
You mentioned medical expenses but there are so much more - a 45 dollar parking ticket you can't pay, handed over to a private debt collector firm will likely end up being 3000 dollars or more by the time you manage to pay it off. That only ever happens to those who don't have the 45 dollars when the ticket comes of course. This happens with alarming frequency in America.
And of course, crap luck tends to come in bunches. I am a high-earner - and I was nearly destroyed by a series of bad luck events. It started when my daughter needed a life-saving operation -and the insurance refused to pay. Massive bill - and it had to go on a credit card that was only supposed to exist for emergencies (no remember - I was debt-free the month before). That same month my car's engine blew up - and since I have to get to work and have no feasible public transport in my city, that had to be paid on the credit card too. A few more bad things happened -and within 3 months I went from zero debt to owing roughly 5 times my monthly salary in short-term debt - most of it credit card debt.
Suddenly debt repayments was eating up 2/3rds of my monthly income - leaving just barely enough to cover the bills and food. I was actually shifting food money into a seperate account on payday so that, if I fall short, I guarantee my family can eat even if that means missing a bill !
I was lucky though - being a high earner I had made investments, specifically I owned an appartment in a very expensive neighbourhood which I was renting out. In the end - that gave me a way out of this debt trap. I sold the apparthment AND my house, and bought a nicer, bigger house which was, nonetheless, cheaper than the combined value of both properties - sufficiently so that I was able to pay of all the debt. I now only owe my house bond and my car financing. But how many of those 25K a year people do you know who own an upscale appartment to rent out ?
And of course, the price I paid for my decision was to lose that valuable investment. That appartment was worth far more in rental income over the long term than it would ever sell for. I had to cash in the smaller value, because that money comes today.
That income was supposed to be part of my retirement, now I'll have to make that up with other investments and hope I never again end up with a series of bad luck bills that force me to use up all my savings, go into debt and cash in my investments to survive.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Rich people have people to do their yards, clean their pool, cook their food, clean their houses and drive them where they want to go in a car that cost more than I'll make in my lifetime. That's rich. 250K is living comfortably with no worries.
You've just described a well paid techie's life in Seattle or the SF Bay Area
They buy a townhouse or highrise condo, so someone else takes care of the landscaping; the pool cleaning is included in the HOA; they get free food at work and when they are at home they get meals delivered; they have a cleaning service come once a week to clean the house; they have their Uber driver take them where they want to go.
I don't make nearly $250K but could lie such a lifestyle if I chose.
Hyperbole much? If you can't make your case without resorting to exaggeration then perhaps your case is not so strong.
"Would kill to..." is a common figure of speech, so not really exaggeration. And the sentiment is true - in many areas of the country, working at walmart is a lucrative job and something to aspire to. Sure beats rinsing blood and guts out of the slaughterhouse (which was an actual job for unskilled laborers in the midwest town where I grew up)
At any rate, those rich aren't really paying much in the way of taxes even if this particular tax is allowed to take effect.
For someone making $250k, that's a $6k tax. It's not bankruptcy but it's like buying the city two venti mochas at Starbucks every day. Just so they can play Social Justice and throw money out the window on misguided programs. Fuck that.
No, it's not. For someone making $250K, it's a $0 tax. It's called a "marginal tax" - one that applies ONLY to income OVER $250K. Educate yourself.
a little extra tax that won't impact their lifestyle but will offset the negative effect they are having on everyone living around them?
That's the dual fallacy of bleeding heart liberals, especially those who don't have themselves a decent income.
First, that wealthy people have a negative effect on people living around them. That's simply not true, you're just demonizing people that *you don't know* for the sake of justifying the theft of their money. Second, tax money doesn't "offset" negative effects, they simply make the city adminisitration fatter and more powerful.
For people who want to help the poor, there's charity and various NGOs. Leave the others alone and take your socialist views to one of those successful socialist countries, as soon as you find one.
lucm, indeed.
Given how frequent stories like this are in America, it always baffles me that Americans are so vehemently opposed to the kind of social healthcare enjoyed by Europe. When even the rich can be stung badly by medical bills and uncooperative insurers, it seems odd that they would reject the idea of getting rid of the insurers, paying a similar amount in tax instead, and getting healthcare for everyone without the risk of people missing out or being shafted by their insurers.
I know it's all about that dreaded T-word. Americans hate the idea of being taxed. But really, the way things are set up now, you're effectively paying the same money to a private company. It may just as well be a tax.
The American mind is trapped by ideology and propaganda. We have a strong myth of the self-made man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, without help from others. The very wealthy perpetuate that myth because it serves to insulate them from judgement about the degree of their wealth. The money a person has "earned" is theirs to do with as they please, regardless of how disproportionate it might be or whatever else might be true. You see this in the irrational anti-tax attitudes you mentioned as well.
The lower classes have also been conditioned to fight each other rather than band together. This is again by design. The owners have historically pitted groups against each other to keep them from uniting against a common enemy. So when people see public sector union workers (for example) getting benefits, they want to take those benefits away rather than ask why they also are not receiving those benefits.
What this means is that many people vote for values rather than policies. They vote for the person who will maintain or implement the proper order of things, as they see it. Basically, they are more concerned with making sure the next guy is as miserable as they are, than they are with creating a shared prosperity.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Did he work 5x longer or harder than the median Joe who only makes $51k? Or the guy working two full-time minimum wage jobs to make $32k?
Almost certainly not. He was in the right place at the right time, had the right connections, etc. Income in the US is based more on luck than effort or skill.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
First, that wealthy people have a negative effect on people living around them. That's simply not true, you're just demonizing people that *you don't know* for the sake of justifying the theft of their money.
Ah, the poor victim mentality. Note that I didn't demonize anyone, you imagined that because you are unable to overcome your prejudices about me. I don't know exactly who or what you think I am, but I'm certainly not demonizing the well paid people working for Amazon here.
Second, tax money doesn't "offset" negative effects, they simply make the city adminisitration fatter and more powerful.
That's clearly bollocks. I guess when they hire an extra person to collect the refuse from the new McMansions, that's just the city getting fatter and more powerful, not providing a useful and necessary service.
For people who want to help the poor, there's charity and various NGOs.
In other words, you prefer begging. The people who beg the hardest get some cash, the others lose out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It doesn't define you as rich. What it does is provide a workable cutoff point for the government. Two items to consider:
1) As the government you want to make sure you don't offend too many people. You need popular support when you go to confiscate money from people. So, you set the bar where the number of people who are not affected is sufficiently large to garner support, or at the very least apathy, from a significant portion of the population.
2) As the government you want to make sure that when you institute a new tax you cast as wide a net as possible. You know that governments immediately spend projected taxation increases before a dime is even collected, and that additional spending over and above what is projected to be collected will be green lighted based on the passage of a new tax law. So, setting the bar at $250k is an acceptable loss for the government (they would prefer this tax apply to everyone, but they can't due to item 1 above) but there are still sufficient members of the $250k+ group to generate almost $150 million. When considering the number of people who earn over $250k the gradient runs downhill pretty steep as you climb above $250k, with fewer and fewer high income individuals. And since the point is to cast as wide a net as possible, this threshold works well for capturing more individuals in the taxation scheme.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are such outliers that they don't belong in this discussion at all. And the point of the two Americas meme is that in one of them, you don't get the most basic needs met, and in the other you do. Anything beyond that is fluff. In the case of Buffet and Gates, some very high-priced fluff. But non-essential fluff nonetheless.
Buffet and Gates seem to realize this - having pledged to give most of it away. It's those deluded folks that 'aspire' to be Buffet and Gates that don't get the point. You get to try to live a decent life, accomplish something, and then you die. And if you have any sense, you hope your kids will do the same - instead of inheriting a vast fortune and having no idea how to live.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Wrong, so wrong, so very, very wrong.
A person's income (if they work for someone else) is based ENTIRELY on how much the employer views their effort is worth.
THAT'S IT. It's not about "oh, poor Jonny works so hard at the mill and it's back-breaking labor," it's about how much someone else is willing to pay him to do it.
If my effort is valued as higher than another person's, why should I be punished (taxed) for that? People who feel this way (key word FEEL) are unable to distinguish effort from value.
Don't Panic.
Ahh, one of the many fallacies of the ignorant right who have never earned over US$25,000 and still swallow the line that the rich have it hard whilst they push more of the costs onto you because you wont even question it.
Sorry sunshine, but evidence from London to Singapore to NYC have demonstrated the vaunted exodus of the rich to be false. The amount of tax you pay to live in central London is insane and it's not a ghost town. Same with living anywhere in Singapore or Hong Kong... but people still pay it because they want to live there.
The mega-rich aren't going to move out to Bumfuck, Alamabma with you rednecks because they have to pay a little extra to live in Downtown Seattle... if that were the case Bumfuck would already be full of these people because the market controlled rent prices would have done it long before now. In fact, if they did move out to your precious piece of swamp, you'd instantly start complaining about the amount of tax you're paying to support their uppity, city slicker infrastructure. There are reasons they choose to live in already expensive places, because those places have the standards and amenities they want and they're not going to move out to some god-forsaken shithole in Louisiana for a few extra bucks. Hell, it would probably cost them more to have their amenities shipped in than twice the proposed tax.
You need to abandon these libertarian fantasies, the rich wont just pick up and move and if they did, for a place like Seattle that is a good thing because for every 1 that leaves, 10 more want to take their place. Just like Singapore or Central London.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Close, but not quite - as another mentioned it doesn't matter how much value you provide, but how difficult/expensive you are to replace. As an example consider exactly how valuable is it to have working water, sewer, electric service, and other utilities. Then ask yourself, are the people actually on the ground maintaining those systems being paid more in line with the value they provide to society, or the ease with which they could be replaced?
And that is the heart of the discussion about the difference between the income you make (a market concept), and what you earn (an ethical/moral concept).
When those two concepts are deeply out of balance, as they are in the US, then it's appropriate for society to ask how, and to what degree, that imbalance should be corrected.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Fully agree! Heck, if we just pegged the budget increases to inflation plus population growth (cost of delivering services plus increase in service demands) we'd grow ourselves out of a deficit in about 12 years (GDP tends to grow faster than inflation plus pop growth, and Hauser's Law gives us faster tax receipt growth over time). But the Federal Government continues to accelerate its spending faster than reasonable, and claims it's not taxing enough.
There are calls always to increase tax rates back up to those of the 1950s and 1960s, but the reality is the Federal Government collects TWICE the tax revenues, per capita and adjusted for inflation, than it did back in those days. It already taxes, effectively, twice as much. And our deficit and debt has only exploded...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!