WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

seiferteric

I think I don't like income tax as it disincentivizes labor and also makes it harder for working people to build up wealth. Making a million a year sounds like a lot, but who knows how long someone might be making that kind of money? Meanwhile already wealthy people are mostly untouched. Would rather see majority of taxes come from corporate taxes and capital gains.

collabs

I don't understand how anyone in good conscience can vote against this tax. As a reminder, this tax does not affect income under a million US dollars. From the article, if you earn a dollar over a million dollars, you owe 9.9% so you need to pay a dime in income tax.

Neil44

In principle it sounds like a reasonable idea but the obvious problem is that people can become domiciled elsewhere, or structure their income to avoid this. It would be interesting to know what's been planned to mitigate that.

garbawarb

When I was a new grad moving to the US and deciding where to live and work, the biggest draw of Seattle was its lack of income tax. Of course this particular $1 million threshold wouldn't apply to me until I'm very late in my career, or have a lucky year, or get married to a high-income person (the $1 million threshold applies to married couples, not just individuals) but Seattle loses a lot of its appeal if it's not financially advantageous. Of the other tech hubs, SF beats Seattle on weather and jobs and New York beats it on urban lifestyle. Or if you want to avoid income taxes, why not go to Florida or Texas. I wonder if introducing income taxes will impact Seattle's tech hub status going forward. Sometimes people talk about how much these measures will lead to rich people moving away, but discouraging high-income people from moving there I think is a bigger long-term impact.

Simulacra

And the timing is very interesting of the CEO of Starbucks moving out of Washington.

lvspiff

Living in Portland I meet SOOOO many tech people that live across the river in Vancouver just because of the income tax - WA has none - OR has a healthily number of them (5 lines worth of various taxes show up on my paystub). Bigger impact im sure will be Seattle but the impact to Portland is not insignificant. I'm sure the WA tax would be less than the OR one though so I don't see the moves stopping, but probably akin to whats happened in CA where people moved to NV or AZ to escape some of the taxes (not a significant number but ive met enough to wonder). As people retire, they moved away to those places as they think they will be taxed less

kimbernator

I grew up in WA and as much as I enjoyed the lack of income tax, it's factual that until recently they held the title of #1 most regressive state tax system nationwide (recently bumped to #2 by FL). Income taxes are much better distributed among income brackets than consumption taxes are. I grew up just over the river from Portland, where there is no state sales tax; we got to enjoy the best of both worlds by crossing the state line to OR for large purchases and living in WA. Ironically, my home for the last decade (MO) has recently moved forward with a bill eliminating the statewide income tax in favor of a higher sales tax. This is in a state where the two largest cities are situated on the borders of other states, so it's essentially a guarantee that this will backfire.

josefritzishere

Progressive taxation is the most efficient and fair system of taxation. America was it's most prosperous when the top federal income tax topped 90%, 1944-1963. Modern wealth consolidation makes this structure even more logical.

bettercallsalad

As someone who lives in WA, I despise how bad any state government run program here is. Literally it took me 3 months to get a SSN and I couldn’t get hold of anyone. Also on top of this tax, they have this care tax which also taxes 1% of your income for “long term care”. I would love to pay my taxes if I had seen reasonable outcome. So far all I see is a corrupt state government with no accountability and transparency. Also isn’t this illegal? I thought the state constitution says it is illegal.

Hasz

Vote with your feet. It is very easy politically to target those over the top 2-5% of income, but you better believe those tranches will be expanded in the future.

darknavi

WA = Washington State (USA), not Western Australia

lostmsu

WA has been raising taxes for some time, but the problem I care about the most - the prevalence of drugs in high schools - is getting worse. I voted with my $ and out of WA.

HardCodedBias

Legally this is quite fascinating. The state constitution is quite strange wrt. taxes: https://law.justia.com/constitution/washington/constitution-... There is a school of thought that the powers should be enumerated in the constitution. But this is not in favor. Instead this argues that Culliton the ruling that classified income as property was incorrect. And once that door is opened saying that the claims within the existing constitution only apply to property and finally that there is a strong presumption of constitutionality. Seems like a gauntlet. But it seems clear that given the composition of the supreme court that they will pass the gauntlet. A constitution is but paper. It does not hold back the motivated.

_b

Washington State’s constitution limits a tax like this to no more 1% and requires it to be uniform; this law meets neither requirement. I am uncomfortable that supporters of the income tax are so unbothered by it being unconstitutional. So few are insisting we amend the constitution to allow or not do it at all, on the grounds that violating the constitution (or flexibility construing it to match our desired ends) is bad.

tzs

On Nextdoor here (Puget Sound area but on the other side of the water from Seattle) there are a lot of people who (1) post a lot about how property taxes and gasoline taxes are too high, (2) complain about any cuts to government services, and (3) oppose any effort to tax income even if the threshold is way way way higher than anything they or anyone they know will ever come near on the grounds that at some future time the threshold could be removed.

cush

People are worried about billionaires moving to another state as if it’s a bad thing

silexia

Washington lifer here. Considering our Democrat Governor and AG have said they would prosecute any journalist who wants to look into fraud this is horrifying. The budget has grown massively in the last two decades with nothing to show for it. Howard Schultz just left.