Bound for Glory? - The Seattle City Council

"The Seattle City Council on Monday approved adopting a new tax on large businesses, two years after the council repealed a big business tax amid pressure from corporations such as Amazon and the prospect of a voter referendum.

The new tax called “JumpStart Seattle,” from lead sponsor and council member Teresa Mosqueda, will target companies with many highly paid employees, whereas the 2018 “head tax” would have applied to all employees at large companies.

The council voted 7-2 on the measure, which is expected to raise more than $200 million per year. The tax repealed by the council in 2018 weeks after it was adopted was expected to raise $47 million per year.

Mosqueda and council members Lorena Gonzalez, Kshama Sawant, Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold, Dan Strauss and Andrew Lewis voted for the new tax Monday. Alex Pedersen and Debora Juarez voted against it. In last year’s council elections, five candidates defeated opponents who were supported by big business groups.

“This is a huge win,” Mosqueda said. “This is about caring for Seattleites now and into the future. It will help Seattle survive the crisis of COVID and emerge stronger and more equitable.”

Under the new tax, companies with annual payrolls over $7 million will be taxed based on their pay to employees making over $150,000 per year. As amended in committee last week, the tax rate would range from 0.7% to 2.4%, with tiers for various payroll and salary amounts." Seattlemedium.com

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Yup.

Kshama Sawant (a member) stated after the vote that "this is a wonderful opportunity to begin the destruction of the United States and its replacement by a socialist world state." Well, pilgrims, she should get high marks for honesty.

It is apparent that the City Council does not credit the idea that these companies will simply move away.  Texas or some other tax haven would seem possibilities.  Would there be any benefit in moving to western Canada?

It seems that what we are watching is a lot of children playing with big people toys.  How interesting.  pl

https://seattlemedium.com/seattle-city-council-approves-new-tax-on-big-business/

Comments

[upstater]

In the Eisenhower era, corporations paid over 1/3 of the federal budget. Tariffs on imports also paid a large percentage. The top marginal personal income tax rate was 70%.

In the 1960s, my father worked for Bell Aerosystems. The CEO made $120K managing 20,000 employees and building surface ship and rocket engines for Gemini and Apollo. Dad made $12K in an administrative role and experienced machinists made $18K.

The system WORKED for most everyone.

Today, chief executives make 300X the earning of peons. Corporations pay only 6% of the federal budget. Amazon paid ZERO corporate income tax. Apple paid 2%. Lockheed Martin paid 14%.

And where are they going to move, Colonel? Maybe LM will go to Russia or China? Maybe Amazon will move to Alexandria and make life miserable there? Microsoft to Bangalore or Little Rock?

Race to the bottom pandering to corporations, which has been the case for 40+ years now. There is absolutely nothing wrong with expecting corporations to pay taxes. I have no idea what is the basis of the objection. Do any of the readers here pay more than corporations? I sure do!

[TV]

To the voters of Seattle, Minneapolis, LA, San Francisco, NYC:
Life's tough, it's tougher when you're stupid.

[turcopolier]

upstater

They are moving here and as a result the value of my property is going through the roof. I have realtors in NY City calling me up and waging a bidding war for my house. "Throw me in that briar patch." (Uncle Remus reference.)

[Eric Newhill]

Upstater - Personally, my objection is this part,"This is a wonderful opportunity to begin the destruction of the United States and its replacement by a socialist world state."

It isn't about making corporations pay what you might think is an appropriate tax rate. That's material for a reasonable policy debate.

But hey, Maybe the Democrats have just found Biden's running mate.

[turcopolier]

All

"Proscriptions?" When they come with the trucks en route to the camps, I want my name to be on the list.

[turcopolier]

All

The wokies remind me of the way the union broke the back of Sanford-Goodall woolens in my mothers home town in 1953. The family owned company paid high wages and benefits and endowed hospital, library, high school, brass band, golf club, etc., etc. The CIO union demanded more and more in negotiations until the Goodalls said to hell with it and sold to Burlington Mills. The good times ended immediately.

[upstater]

Colonel,

Prior to the 1980s home prices never went "through the roof". That may benefit you personally now, but in the long run such things are hugely negative cf. the financial crisis in 2008 or the S&L crisis in 1990.

I'm sure people in Seattle thought it was great 5 years ago. Not now, however.

[FWH]

I like your point about making corporations more accountable. The waste in government contracting and huge salaries of corporate executives come to mind (among lots of other things to address). You can't be blamed for your sentiment, but....the Seattle City Council is doing the wrong thing. Corporations can and will move to find favorable conditions. Boeing Co. has already shown that it will happen. The managers of many of the major corporations in Seattle must already by thinking about how to carry out a move outside the city limits if not outside the State of Washington. As these corporations leave with their jobs, the city finances will be crumbling.

[Fred]

Col.,

"The good times ended immediately."

Yes, and history will repeat itself. The wokies think they will be safe in a de-capitalized Seattle as the engines of prosperity leave. Detroit is a shell of what it once was, but some of the lefties in public office made a good career out of living off the carcass.

[Jack]

Sir

The tax base is mobile. They can move away. How does the pension requirements for municipal workers get paid then when borrowing is not a palatable option? Cutting services is usually the first step.

The core issue is the growing market concentration and the huge wealth transfers enabled by big government and the Fed. The top 0.1% now have as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

https://twitter.com/trevornoren/status/1216865851099381760?s=21

When the working and middle class keep getting squeezed they respond to demagogues from both the left and right. This is common right through centuries of history.

[tv]

upstater:
Corporations don't pay taxes, you and I do.

[jerseycityjoan]

More on Seattle:

"City of Seattle held segregated training session for white staff aimed at 'undoing their whiteness' and told them 'not to take undeserved promotions' to be better allies for racial justice

"In an email inviting employees to the event, the office asked ‘city employees who identify as white to join this training to learn, reflect, challenge ourselves, and build skills and relationships that help us show up more fully as allies and accomplices for racial justice.’

‘We’ll examine our complicity in the system of white supremacy – how we internalize and reinforce it – and begin to cultivate practices that enable us to interrupt racism in ways to be accountable to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) folks within our community,’ the email continued."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8504187/City-Seattle-held-segregated-training-session-white-staff-aimed-undoing-whiteness.html

This stuff is crazy.

[fakebot]

High taxes in the name of this?

“We are coming for you and your rotten system,” Sawant said. “We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism -- this police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it and replace it with a world based instead on solidarity, genuine democracy and equality -- a socialist world.”

I like Ike. He also offered sobering words for thought on the kind men whose statues are being desecrated and destroyed.

From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Between the likes of Sawant and Lee, I can say this. Lee fought his war and then accepted the peace. The Sawants want to wage that old war again and do away with the peace and unity America has today. If anything needs to be torn down and defeated, it's the ideas held by Sawant. And to those who still don't like the statues, you can always petition your government to have them removed. That's the right way to do it if you really feel strongly about their removal.

[Bobo]

Upstarter
As to the “Paying More Than The Corporations” open your eyes. Payroll Tax, Sales Tax, Real Estate Tax, City Tax, State Tax and all the other hidden little taxes mount up. I’m sure other Seattle Council members were a little more creative in taxing than the present.
So the Wokies need more money to operate their little panacea, which tax is next then when they run out of the taxes and get around to cost cutting where is the big outlays. Yup you, me and others in retirement. Guess that guy who produced Soylent Green was a future thinker. I want the Purple one though with Hendrix blaring away doing the SSB.
No offense my Friend but understand where these people are going and the road bumps they will be crossing. I think we should of disciplined them more as they were growing up.

[akaPatience]

Washington State itself imposes no income tax. But in Seattle, the top 4 taxes that produce most of the revenue the city relies on are: property taxes, retail sales taxes, something called the B&O tax which taxes GROSS business income, plus utility taxes. This new city income tax will only apply to the high-wage earners within the city limits of Seattle. SO, no doubt surrounding suburbs and locales farther afield will benefit.

A problem for Seattle and Portland, Oregon are that they've become meccas for Millennials, too many of whom are underachieving and simply can't afford the cost of living in those places. I would imagine many of them signed the petitions gathered to force the city council's vote to impose this tax on higher wage earners. Ain't it great when those who are exempt from paying taxes have the power to impose them?!?!

As a landlord, I'm not fond of this aspect of Sawant's manifesto:

"The private, for-profit housing market has utterly failed working people. Not just here and now, but everywhere and always." Yikes.

Coming to a neighborhood near you...

[Fred]

upstater,

"which has been the case for 40+ years now. "

if only Joe Biden had been able to convince Obama to do something about that; and systemic racism; and statues; and educational inequality; and, well, at least Barack got his Netflix deal while the $ was worth something.

[Phillip e Cattar]

Upstater,Biden's running mate will probably feel the same way but be clever enough to hide it, at least temporarily.

[PRC90]

More kind words from the lovely Kshama:

https://www.socialistalternative.org/2020/07/07/kshama-sawant-tax-amazon-victory-speech/

"Because we are coming for you and your rotten system."

Despite the hyperbole, it is obvious that long term deindustrialization and recent CV19 shutdowns are producing a group of unemployed and disaffected people and some of these will be very susceptible to these ideas.

[Barbara Ann]

The last attempt at a head tax was repealed after less than a month, thanks in large part to it being implemented in an election year. Seattle councilmen & councilwomen opted to save their skins in the face of a popular resistance to the tax. It may take a little longer to repeal this version, as the Council have opted to implement it between election years.

Amazon reportedly spent $1.5M on the 2019 Seattle Council election campaign. That works out at an expense of $750k a year, as the elections are on odd years - chump change. Amazon's proportion of the estimated $214M annual take from this tax must far exceed that, as I expect would the cost of moving.

I'd bet that between now and the next election we'll see branded homeless shelters and all sorts of other corporate sponsored social projects popping up in Kshama's District 3 and elsewhere. All of them will have faces associated with them who will be candidates in 2021 fully supporting the repeal of the tax. If that doesn't work and the cost of keeping Trots off the council becomes too much, then yes, a corporate exodus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_head_tax

[Seamus Padraig]

Kshama Sawant aside, I'm actually glad Seattle is considering taxing these traitorous corporations, many of which basically pay very little in taxes. Additionally, I think this might teach all those anti-American CEOs like Bezos a lesson: if they continue to support the Antifa-BLM show, there will be consequences for them, too.

[turcopolier]

upstater

We live now, not before the 1980s. My house in Alexandria is rising rapidly in price because Amazon is moving into the Alexandria/Arlington area.

[BABAK MAKKINEJAD]

upstater:

I agree with your observations.

Add to that 40% of working adults pay no Federal taxes, and, in fact, receive money from the US Government.

What you descrribed used to be called the American Model; which was re-engineered in 1980s and later globalized in 1990s.

It is actually a very strange thing to watch Capitalist Financiers in the United States cause the greatest wealth-transfer in history to the People's Republic of China. It were as though the Financiers had become Justice Warriors.

I saw this first hand as clerical, professional, and managerial jobs were eliminated in Michigan to re-appear in Northern Mexico, in China, and in India.

Could a man such as Eddie Lampert be able to do what he had in 1948? I doubt it.

The Religious Fundamentalists, the Shoah Cultists, the Arm Chair Strategists, the Cold Warriors, the Hedonists, the Dope Heads, the Financiers, the Unions all have had their day in the United States, it seems to me - living their fantasies.

[Eakens]

These idiots haven’t realized that Amazon is building like crazy in Bellevue. They’re going to pull entirely out of Seattle. Watch and see.

She can enjoy her shithole.

[Mark K Logan]

Where ever there is a great disparity of wealth expect some socialists to pop up. It's inevitable.

This event should be viewed in context. Last year our new Socialists proposed a truly idiotic tax on large businesses based on an employee head-count. This was met with absolute assurances from Amazon et al that they would up-stakes and move immediately. That idea face-planted spectacularly. This is but a traditional income tax on the wealthy.

Consider it lucky if the young ideologues, whom always seem to find a way to achieve power, allow reality to catch up with them sometimes. Best that can reasonably expected of them, really.

[BABAK MAKKINEJAD]

Eakens:

America must be the only country in the world that furnishes foreigners with a path to citizenship and participation in her cultural, commercial, and political life - to be followed by a wish for her death by those newly minted Americans.