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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

In Washington it is much broader than the tech sector.

Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies and tech companies of every size for openly ideological reasons. It has rapidly become one of the worst business environments in the country when it used to be one of the best. Many companies have stopped or reduced hiring in Seattle and are moving operations to other States; there is a new announcement in the news every other day.

I know several longtime residents that have recently moved out of State or are no longer domiciled there as a consequence. There was an article in the news just this week that housing prices are starting to decline rapidly in Seattle.

It is looking like they couldn't help themselves and killed the golden goose.

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Which policies specifically? Certainly not the income tax on million+ income, seems pretty modest. We moved from TX. Property tax rate is low, no income tax sub million in income, schools are great (and almost all new), roads are fine and transit seeing massive investment. They definitely need to fix budget, but there's _ample_ wealth here to deal with it. I think they'll figure it out.

_Oregon_ has bad policies (10% income tax on all, upwards of 14% on high income earners at 400k); schools are in a rough place, their legacy pension system is a disaster. But Washington seems fine imo. TX and such states will always be a draw while their cost of living is low, if you don't mind the heat and general lack of outdoors (relative to PNW). IMO the weather and housing prices are the main tradeoffs between WA and TX.

When did blatantly unconstitutional laws become modest?

Why are income brackets unconstitutional?

You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive. The cost of doing business has become unreasonably high and is so badly structured that it creates perverse incentives for how you organize business.

And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered.

Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess.

Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.

>You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive.

None of this matters. We have been hearing how California is doing the same shit for years and people are moving out in droves, but turns out California house prices are still high because people are staying there and its still a very good place to live and work on the average, despite way higher cost of living.

So Washington is going to do just fine.

Oregon has some decent things going for it. Multnomah county is rolling out Preschool for All and it's wildly popular. I know lots of people who were going to move, but stayed in Oregon just because they got into the early lottery for it.

There’s no way preschool for all is broadly popular.

It soaks the “rich” with an income threshold that isn’t indexed to inflation and kicks in at an income level where preschool is still a major affordability challenge.

And then you pay PFA and don’t get preschool for your kid because we’re still years away from having enough seats for everyone.

So it is preschool for some (multco paying for seats in existing preschool, aka kicking your kid out of their preschool spot) paid for by the broad middle class.

Even Kotek was ragging on it.

2020’s 125k/200k thresholds should be today’s 150/250 thresholds. They are not.

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-count...

This is all a temporary problem. PFA will roll out to everyone, income thresholds can be (and are) renegotiated, and as someone who has a large PFA tax burden, I'm happy to pay for it even if my kids will age out before I get the benefit. I have never met anyone outside of ranting internet commenters who is actually mad about this situation.

Establishing free universal child care as the norm that everyone agrees we have to find a way to provide is the real virtue here. Detractors like you are missing the forest for the trees.

“Long term care tax”

I don't think they killed the goose at all.

The tech companies killed the golden goose that was handed to them. They got too greedy. Amazon basically got carte blanche to build in Seattle, and plenty of tax credits to do so.

Amazon and their founder then told WA gov that they were going to relocate to Florida. WA gov said "well, we paid billions for your infrastructure, so if you're going to leave, please partially refund us" and Bezos whined and whined and whined. Imagine, a guy worth (at the time) nearly half a trillion dollars being told that he should have to pay a few hundred million dollars for his broken promises.

Imagine being given incredibly generous tax incentives for decades that allowed you to build a multi trillion dollar company, and then whining when the giver of those incentives asks for a tiny portion of that to be paid back when you tell them you're leaving.

For readers not in Washington, there is currently legislation being worked on that is essentially a millionaire's tax, (simplified as) 10% income tax on income over 1 million dollars, inflation adjusted.

There are a few very angry, emotional, and vocal opponents of this in most corners of the internet, although very few of them actually make a million dollars and there are many million+ income people supporting this.

Demographically, there are over 3 million households in WA, and only 20k of them would be affected.

The bigger news is that it would be WA's first-ever income tax, along with the tax on capital gains income they just introduced. You can look at any historical example of introducing income tax in the US to see that the rates always expand to lower brackets over time.

Ahh, another favorite talking point. Yes, because the tax burden is already carried by the people you claim to worry about

Those people you wanna tax will just wfh from another state. Then you'll wonder why tax revenue is down and why no one is hiring.

People aren't leaving Seattle to save a small amount in taxes every year

I lived in the Seattle area and would be affected by some of these taxes. I moved to California recently. WA lost its tax advantage, so If I’m now going to be paying the same taxes, I might as well enjoy better weather and schools for my kids.

So, you _already_ moved, _for non tax reasons_

Maybe the opponents consider it a foot in the door; a wedge that can be expanded gradually to include lower tiers at lower percentages AKA the beginning of a WA State Income Tax. There are not few 400k households in Seattle.

The majority of states have one so it's not that big a deal, but it'll be less often said "I'm going to turn down this higher SF offer for Seattle b/c of lower COL...".

I'm not sure where the next refuge will be. Austin? Memphis?

Similar thing in California. And good ol' fronttunner for president Gavin Newsom is actively trying to kill it.

Just to remind you that he's still indeed an Establishment Democrat. He won't drown us in fascism, but he sure isn't fighting for the working class.

And there is such small thing as state constitution that explicitly forbids any income tax.

Current government is using it as toilet paper, first by introducing capital gains tax, and now income tax.

I see in another comments though that you argue in bad faith by dismissing opponent arguments as “small amount”, “talking points”. If you don’t have anything real to say, don’t bother to answer.

The state constitution does not forbid an income tax. We both know it is more nuanced than that. Don't accuse me of bad faith in the same comment that you present an inaccuracy in the form of simplification that suits your argument

There is nothing nuanced about that. You look into 2 places and see read it for yourself. Stop spreading lies.

—-

https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=1.90.100

RCWs > Title 1 > Chapter 1.90 > Section 1.90.100

RCW 1.90.100

Personal income tax prohibition.

Neither the state nor any county, city, or other local jurisdiction in the state of Washington may tax any individual person on any form of personal income. For the purposes of this chapter, "income" has the same meaning as "gross income" in 26 U.S.C. Sec. 61.

——

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...

Gross income defined (a) General definition Except as otherwise provided in this subtitle, gross income means all income from whatever source derived, including (but not limited to) the following items: (1) Compensation for services, including fees, commissions, fringe benefits, and similar items; (2) Gross income derived from business; (3) Gains derived from dealings in property; (4) Interest; (5) Rents; (6) Royalties; (7) Dividends; (8) Annuities; (9) Income from life insurance and endowment contracts; (10) Pensions; (11) Income from discharge of indebtedness; (12) Distributive share of partnership gross income; (13) Income in respect of a decedent; and (14) Income from an interest in an estate or trust.

Golden Goose? WA has a massive budget shortfall.

There has been zero accountability for that massive budget shortfall. Revenue has increased 2x over the last decade with nothing to show for it. People are rightly skeptical of giving them even more money. And they have gone about trying to increase revenue even more in just about the most toxic ways possible, which will almost certainly erode the tax base.

That state desperately needs to restructure its finances but the legislature is almost complete captured by clueless ideologues. Washington isn't California. Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.

I've lived a large fraction of my life in Washington and I'm watching the State commit suicide in real-time.

“ Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.”

How old are you? What propaganda told you this? In my generation (young millennial/genz) the attraction of living in Seattle, which pulled me and almost a dozen professional friends at this point has been:

- high quality urban living in a temperate environment. Including access to great parks, waterfront, bikeability in the city

- access to great outdoors and regional amenities like skiing, ocean fishing, hiking, wine country

- liberal policies and general friendly society (it’s friendlier here than the east coast)

- no state income tax (we’re all very high tax bracket)

- a high enough income population that you can find a plethora of high-end products and services that cluster around high income earners (only a few us cities have this stronger than Seattle I feel)

Oregon ticks most of those boxes except the difference is that Oregon has very few jobs. People flock to WA because of jobs created by long-standing business friendly policies.

That doesn't explain everything, obviously, but I think you need to take it into consideration. For decades I've heard this in some form from people: "Oregon is amazing, but I had to leave when I couldn't get a job." Meanwhile the Sea-Tac region has had amazing growth, packed wall-to-wall with a range of companies.

I agree, difference between explosive growth and “consistent draw” is large employers setting up in the region.

Another interesting anecdote is that I know many people who work remote for companies all over the world who moved to the Seattle area once they had a remote job. I am one of these people who moved once I got a remote job. Im not sure what kind of impact this has long run. I think the flywheel drawing high skill people to Seattle is still very strong.

Oregon is on the other end of the continuum when it comes to income taxes ;-)

If you're not too high an income earner, the Oregon income tax is worse than California's.

And no, Washington's sales tax doesn't come close to the Oregon income tax.

Weather is worse in the Portland area, can be a good few degrees warmer than Seattle in the summer

For my demographic (Early genz), there are only 3 reasons to be here:

A. Their job is only available here

B. No state income tax

(C?). They REALLY love skiing/hiking

People have always regularly left for NYC/Bay Area, but I predict it will start to happen in droves over the next few years as A rapidly fades and legislation begins to threaten B.

Have you read about _where_ the budget is going? You are complaining about accountability without offering a diagnosis or showing any understanding for what is actually happening.

The budget expansion is almost entirely by medicaide.

Looking at 2019-2023

* Human Services: +~50% nominal → ~+22% real — biggest absolute dollar growth, driven almost entirely by Medicaid expansion and COVID enrollment

* K-12: +23% nominal → ~0% real — flat in purchasing power

* Higher Education: +~20% nominal → ~-2% real — slight real decline

* Government Operations: +~30% nominal → ~+6% real — modest real growth, headcount/compensation driven

* Natural Resources: +~25% nominal → ~+2% real — roughly flat

* Total Budget: +43.5% nominal → ~+17% real

Seattle and Portland OR are ground zero for the burgeoning anti-AI movement.

Will you elaborate on the “indefensibly bad legislation”?

Like poor people have always understood, assume taxes always go up. Time for the rich to learn this lesson as well.

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