Seattle City Council votes 9-0 for scaled-down head tax on large employers | Hacker News Reader

Seattle City Council votes 9-0 for scaled-down head tax on large employers

seattletimes.com

15 pointsuptown13 comments

Interestingly the city does not have a revenue problem as its budget has grown from $2.8 billion to $4.2 billion from 2010 to 2017, much faster than inflation and population growth would justify. And since Seattle already allocated $200 million annually for the estimated 8-10 thousand homeless, clearly there is a fundamental problem with spending and efficiency.

Do you have numbers on this? I don't doubt this is a problem but I just don't have the data to back it up.

It's the official city budget minus power utilities (which they merge into the budget for some weird reason). Just look that up.

The spending on homeless initiatives includes money allocated directly by the city, plus federal, state, and county. Also easy to research. [1]

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/how-much-...

Something is rotten with how Seattle spends its money. I fear it is turning into San Francisco in that regard. This extra funding won’t solve any homelessness when the fundamental problem is one of too few homes. But will they upzone to the levels needed? No.

I skimmed maybe two dozen of the comments on the story's website, and it's incredible how wildly hostile they are about trying to do anything to help the homeless.

I know at the crux of this is the belief that people should work to have a place to stay. All I can say is I can't bring myself to do it. I have been sober almost 15 months now and I've taken and quit maybe a half dozen jobs in the last two year or so. Frankly I just feel real uncomfortable most of the time. Nothing is worth being miserable.

I am on the housing first list here in Charlotte, where the homeless problem isn't as severe but prevalent nevertheless. I have been waiting since November. I've been often sleeping under a bridge, hoping somebody doesn't jump me in the middle of the night.

Supposedly housing is cheaper than letting the homeless remain on the street, but I think it comes down to the fact that working conditions are so generally odious that it is assumed any entitlements of free housing would result in the masses balking at work. And of course everybody is so self-centered they can only think of getting the freebie themselves, mindless of how fortunate they are to have a tolerable job, a family and the like.

By the way, I had this crazy idea that half of all income should be redistributed. I think it would make anyone making under $70,000 richer.

On the one hand you're doing well by remaining sober for a year and working irregularly to somewhat support your own life.

On the other hand you announce you'd like to steal (aka "redistribute") half of the income of all people who work, and profess to not understand why these people are hostile to spending more money on people such as yourself -- or such as those who steal bikes (to the point that one cannot keep them outside homes), drop used needles in public parks, openly shoot up in the street, attack pedestrians and commit murder in the streets and in random home invasions, or commit rape in the middle of the day at a car dealership.

Given that WA state doesn't have income tax. I am assuming it must be quite difficult to introduce city income tax. What exactly are the issues here?

The state supreme court in the 1930s heard a court case on a then newly enacted income tax and said it was unconstitutional. So it's still presumed to be the same. Seattle has created a kind of test income tax separately that they are trying to use to overturn that court case.

it's interesting that the criterion was the size of the company's gross revenues. (i.e. if a company has gross revenues greater than $20 million, it will be assessed a tax of $275 per employee.)

i guess it's desirable for the city to focus the tax on high revenue companies because, presumably, they're large and would have a hard time leaving Seattle.

OTOH, i would think it would be more fair, in some sense, to base this tax on overall profitability. i.e. tax the companies that are the most profitable, or the most profitable per employee or something.

Profitability is an easily gamed stat. While their target value might not be the most optimal, it's a simpler system and it's much more difficult to game revenue numbers without hurting your business

You need to cross reference things like Hollywood accounting[1]. Profit can be manipulated. The original Star Wars movies have never made a profit. Let that sink in. Corporations and the rich are quite good at cooking the books for a variety of purpose in order to subvert the will of the people. So "profit" is not a good measure. They're too good at lying about it in the right way.

* [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

yes. thank you. it's well known that profit figures can be manipulated, especially in the entertainment business, which offers perhaps the most egregious case. but not every corporation goes to those extremes.

the fact remains that many corporations report that they have earned a profit, year after year. the federal government (until last year's extreme tax law overhaul) was on track to collect about $400 billion a year in taxes on corporate income. (see https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX )

(if corporations are so easily able to make their profits vanish with accounting tricks, why did they push so hard for this tax rate reduction?)

on the other hand, employee head counts are not immune to manipulation. they too can be decreased: job functions of actual employees can be sourced to outside contracting firms. some jobs can be eliminated or automated.

the point i was trying to make, overall, is that it's wise to take the needed cash from those who are most able to pay it. i'm not sure employer head count really captures that. and it adds a disincentive to job creation. is that the best idea they can come up with?

sounds like an income tax - not legal in this state. but sure, taxing the rich corps makes sense.

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