Orig Income Rate Adj Income (2025 Dollars)
Up to $20,000 1% Up to $600,000
$20,000 to $50,000 2% $600,000 to $1,500,000
$50,000 to $75,000 3% $1,500,000 to $2,250,000
$75,000 to $100,000 4% $2,250,000 to $3,000,000
Over $100,000 5% Over $3,000,000
I don't have a dog in this fight and if it's what the people of Washington want, so be it.
(edited for formatting
Why is it when people are against a tax they typically talk about it in terms of historical context, unintended consequences, interstate migration, while people in favor of the tax almost exclusively appeal to emotional blackmail statements like "paying your fair share" (when something like 40% of the country pays no federal income tax whatsoever) or "good conscience" or assume anyone with any money got it through borderline illegal activities?
Federal power is shifting south. If you like the politics of New York and California that's a long-term problem that needs to be resolved.
> And even if the estimates are wrong
Nice, covering all your bases.
> Southern states are growing much faster
Yeah, smaller states grow faster than larger ones.
1. https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-apportionment-for...
A cynical take on this situation is that the current crop of politicos in these states launch these ever-increasing benefit systems in the knowledge that this attracts voters from a few segments of the population as well as 'future voters' who will move to these places because they promise to provide them with (more) benefits than their current domiciles. Once the costs of the whole system become too high the system will no longer be tenable but the current crop of politicos will by that time have moved on to greener pastures, probably golf courses in some nice shielded and guarded areas. The 'other party' will end up winning the elections after having been out of power for a long time but this will end up being a Pyrrhic victory since they inherit a state on the verge of financial collapse. OK, they say, "we need to fix this mess and the only way to achieve that is to cut spending because we can not raise taxes above where they've been raised by our predecessors" - in fact this promise was one of the factors which made them win the elections. They do just that, lower benefits, lower some taxes - but not that much because they do need money to pay off all those debts and all the running contracts entered by their predecessors - and they manage to pull the state away from the brink of financial ruin.
At the next election round the party which put in place all those benefit programs portrays the current incumbents as "inhumane penny-pushers who only want to appease the rich" with organised - and paid - protests by all the right groups, long media campaigns about the threat of *-ism and *-phobia, the works. The current incumbents try to defend their record stating that they're just cleaning up the mess left by the previous leadership who are financially irresponsible spendthrifts but that message is not nearly as emotionally appealing as the video clips of poor single mothers who now have less to feed their poor children, about the cancelled school trips because the state no longer had the funds to pay for them.
The elections are won by the party which put in place the programs which nearly bankrupted the state, the new leadership undoes part of what the previous leadership did to save the state from financial ruin and as a result the process is set to repeat in a few years. Enough years at least to make sure they get to retire to greener pastures, probably golf courses in nice shielded and guarded neighbourhoods. They don't have to worry about such silly things as financial responsibility, they know they can get the other side to clean up the mess and they also know they'll be able to use the measures the others need to take to clean up the mess to launch a campaign against them which is nearly sure to regain them the leadership in one or two election cycles.
As the label on the shampoo bottle says: rinse, repeat.
If you'd rather not be part of the protest gig economy but prefer a steady job there's plenty of NGO staffing positions available. Quota restrictions may apply, check with your local coordinator.
Many Democrats object to it in principle because the new income tax is unconstitutional on its face; they support an income tax but ignoring the constitution because it is inconvenient and blocking people from voting on it is gross. The supreme court in Washington won't be any help, they are have an unfortunate track record of rubberstamping whatever the party wants.
This is in addition to many years of tax increases exceeding growth, the regular introduction of new poorly designed taxes that are simultaneously wasted and expanded with no accountability.
Many Democrats fully expect a rugpull is coming because that is the recent history in Washington. Regressive taxes are never lowered or removed, they just stack new ones on top of them.
For all the reasons you can vote against any tax.
Taxation is not the default. The justification always has to come from the proponents.
And I say this as a pro tax person who has voted for more taxes and lives in a high income tax state.
Defense contractors, road works, entitlement fraud, politicians' unexplainable wealth, college tuition, learing centers, and the list goes on.
Manage the money properly.
Logically speaking, the solution is clear going forward:
1. Higher taxes 2. Reduced government spending
However, we are not willing to have these difficult conversations and are focused on appeasing people.
Also, lets put things in context -- here is a summary from Claude. Over the last decade, federal income taxes went down for nearly everyone in rate terms, but the percentage benefit was larger for high earners and corporations.
You want people to vote for a millionaire tax tie it with a constitutional amendment that requires a higher vote bar to ever increase it and have all numbers automatically inflation adjusted
“Most of the roughly $4 billion a year the tax would bring it would be devoted to the state’s general-fund budget to pay for government agencies and services. A 5% chunk would be earmarked for early education and child care.
Democrats also say they’d use some of the money to fund free school lunch and breakfast for all kids in K-12 schools, though Republicans pointed out that money is not legally earmarked in the income tax bill.
ADVERTISING Skip Ad Skip Ad Skip Ad The bill would also exempt more businesses from paying the state’s business and occupation tax. It also would eliminate the sales tax on purchases of diapers, and personal hygiene products such as toothpaste, antiperspirants and shampoo.
It also would expand the state’s Working Families Tax Credit, which sends annual rebates of up to $1,300 a year to lower-income working families. Ferguson had pushed for the expansion of the program and said the revised bill would make 460,000 households eligible for the payments.”
TL; DR It’s not materially curbing the sales tax.
This new tax regime makes no attempt to improve the tax structure or reduce taxes for anyone.
Then you have intellectual blinders on. There’s good reasons to have broad based taxes instead of singling out rich people. In Sweden, for example, the top tax bracket kicks in at 1.5x the median income. In Germany, the second highest 42% bracket kicks in around 70,000 euros and the top 45% bracket kicks in at 277,000 euros.
None of the countries that American liberals admire in terms of having a robust welfare state adopt a policy of “soak the rich.” The have policies based on solidarity where everyone in the top half or third take on a heavy tax burden.
In the 1%, average income in Germany is 272k usd. In California, it's north of 1mil usd. At 0.1%, it's 1.1 mil usd in Germany and 3.2+ mil in California.
The distributions between high and low income earners are much flatter in Germany because it is harder to abuse the system to get to such salaries. No so in America. Hence Germany also does not need such aggressive taxation schemes as what's proposed (they also have way more flat taxes as well).
In California, the big jump comes at $72,000, where the 9.3% rate kicks in. The $742,000 rate is only a little higher, at 12.3%. That’s similar to Germany where 42% kicks in at 70,000 euros (top 15%) and the top rate is only a little higher at 45%.
Can't comment how total tax in Germany might compare to the current discussion.
Yes, but Washington’s proposed income tax is extremely skewed, while California’s is pretty flat.
Bourgeoisie blinders are on.
For now. The legislature refused to add an amendment forbidding the threshold from ever being lowered to guarantee that it only applies to a million and above.
The way the Washington state constitution works is income is treated as property, and property taxes must be uniform.
So this bill isn't just a millionaire's tax, it's a state-wide income tax of 9.9% with the first million exempt.
It's a good thing, for now, but it does set precedent and the fact they refused to add language to the bill forbidding that exemption from every being removed or lowered is telling. The income threshold will eventually be lowered.
Wouldn't such a change have to be made by the same legislature with a similar majority? Or was this some sort of constitutional change that required a more qualified majority, after which the threshold can be changed more easily than this could be introduced?
The WA constitution doesn't seem to have anything to say on income tax, just a lot about property tax?
Yes. The legislature voted on the additional language and it did not pass.
> The WA constitution doesn't seem to have anything to say on income tax, just a lot about property tax?
Washington state treats income as property, and property taxes must be uniform and flat within a specific property class.
Technically, this law does run afoul of that because having an exemption makes it not uniform, and per the state constitution property tax is capped at a total aggregate levy of 1% per year.
The state will use the argument that this is not a property tax, but an excise tax on the privilege of earning high income from the state's economy. They used a similar argument for the capital gains tax, and won in the WA supreme court.
To modify the state constitution, you need 2/3 vote in both the house and the senate, and it also must be approved by a simple majority of voters in the next general election.
Since republicans are always unified against an income tax, dems only hold a 30-19 majority in the senate, and a 59-39 majority in the house, missing 3 and 7 votes respectively.
The plan for this tax is basically to have it challenged on purpose and leave it up to the state supreme court to re-interpret the constitution, and consider this an excise tax, which is the same way they were able to pass the state's capital gains tax.
E.g my Employer pays about 125 to pay me 100 because of payroll tax. Then I receive 70 because the employer also pays my tax directly. My income was only 100 and the total tax was 55.
For highly paid tech employees, the total tax burden across employer and employee in Washington has become one of the highest in the US. Even if the employee doesn’t see all of that, the employer definitely does. Washington already has de facto income taxes by proxy and this is on top of that.