Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Here in Seattle, we have no income tax. We also don't charge any taxes on things like transit, groceries, healthcare, rent, and utilities.

It's quite possible to live as a lower-income individual in Seattle without paying almost any state or local taxes.

But if you smoke tobacco or marijuana, drink alcohol or sugary drinks, eat fast food or prepared food -- you'll pay a ton in taxes. It's a bit ironic that such a progressive town has found a way to push so many taxes on poor people in an attempt to help them.

View on HN

I feel like the conclusion you are drawing from pushing to is weak here. Yes, those with chemical dependencies for smoking or drinking that also are poor would fall in this category of taxes but sugary drinks, fast food, and prepared food I would say do not fall in that category. I'm not sure how you are tying the other ones because they are primarily consumption taxes as being pushed exclusively on the poor. Even when I was less fortunate what was killing me were things like gas tax, having tolls be more expensive then electronic payments/ezpass, paying government fees and incurring service charges unless you do some crazy manual effort, or running into services that needed me to have a smartphone with data instead of the flip phone I had at the time. Yes, I ate fast food and bought prepared food but I just did it less than I am doing now and I was choosing options that matched my income so my total tax burden from those verticals were lower anyway.

I mean the biggest driver of this is not anything to do with Seattle specifically, but instead the State's constitutional prohibition on an income tax, which forces cities and counties to use more regressive tax methods.

A prohibition on income tax and on progressive (uneven) taxation in general. The legislature are trying to push against both prohibitions in 2022. They have levied a flat 0.85% payroll tax, which is essentially an income tax, and a progressive capital gains tax (with a wide 0% bracket and a 7% bracket above some threshold).

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how those both hold up in the courts. The LTC tax is along these lines as well (while also being fairly regressive because literally everyone with any meaningful income is going to opt out of it).

> Here in Seattle, we have no income tax.

We're (Washington) adding a 0.85% payroll (more or less income) tax for most workers in 2022.

> We also don't charge any taxes on things like transit, groceries, healthcare, rent, and utilities.

Groceries: Uncooked foodstuffs are tax-exempt. But alcohol, toilet paper, and diapers are taxed.

Rent: We have property taxes and those are definitely passed through to renters by landlords.

Utilities: There are taxes on both SCL (electricity) and SPU (water and trash) services. They're just included in the prices shown on your bills.

> It's a bit ironic that such a progressive town has found a way to push so many taxes on poor people in an attempt to help them.

Washington as a whole (and to some extent Seattle) is really more libertarian than progressive. There are more progressives in Seattle than elsewhere in the state, but for some reason our image is more progressive than the reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com