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WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

seattletimes.com

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Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#111

Post by mil22 »

abracadaniel wrote: post #71
rayiner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Objectively, anyone making $50 million should feel it a lot and be taxed heavily. Nobody is making $50 million under their own power You’ve got it backwards. The people making $50,000 are the ones who are dependent on someone else to provide all the infrastructure for their job.

The person earning $50m a year is profiting on the labor of hundreds of thousands of people. Rent seeking on their labor and skills, relying 100,000x more on the infrastructure that made them rich. No one makes $50m a year in a vacuum, they do so by utilizing the economy they live in and rely on.

If that's the way you see it, you are also free to do so. Labor is a market and the laws of supply and demand are at play just like any other market. Go start a company and hire some people. This is Y Combinator's Hacker News after all. The world needs more founders.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#112

Post by pc86 »

ambicapter wrote: post #86
cma256 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both California and New York have shrinking populations according to Wikipedia. And even if the estimates are wrong and they do have growing populations you still need to consider the fact that the Southern states are growing much faster. 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.

California has a "Neutral Decrease" in population and New York has a "Neutral Increase" according to Wikipedia. I'm gonna go with the 5 year trendline, which is up. > 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.

You'll have a much better time here if you take others' arguments with the assumption that they're made in good faith.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#113

Post by dragonwriter »

pc86 wrote: post #109
dragonwriter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising income taxes for those making over $1 million while cutting taxes paid by people making under $1 million makes it cheaper (in employer cost for the same disposable income; looked at a different way, it provides more disposable income for the same nominal pay) to hire workers across most of the income spectrum of any industry (even in tech—most workers in the field aren’t making over $1 million/yr).

The only people making more than $1M in W2 income are in fields where nearly everyone is going to be making that. Highly specialized physicians come to mind pretty quickly but I'm sure there are "lots of" (relatively speaking) attorneys making that too, and probably some other fields where it's more doable than something like tech or sales. There is no way this meaningfully changes the income distribution of hires in…

I didn't say it changed the income distribution within thr industry, I said it made hiring for the vast majority of roles less expensive in terms of disposable income provided (or, holding nominal pay constant, provides greater disposable income at the same pay.)

That is, its not a negative economic incentive except for people who have a very large amount of income taxed as regular income where that income is not dependent on the ability to have other people with more normal incomes working in close proximity.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#114

Post by alkonaut »

thewebguyd wrote: post #40
collabs wrote: post #3

I don't understand how anyone in good conscience can vote against this tax. As a reminder, this tax does not affect income under a million US dollars. From the article, if you earn a dollar over a million dollars, you owe 9.9% so you need to pay a dime in income tax.

> As a reminder, this tax does not affect income under a million US dollars. 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 in…

> The legislature refused to add an amendment forbidding the threshold from ever being 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?

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#115

Post by pc86 »

_b wrote: post #64

Washington State’s constitution limits a tax like this to no more 1% and requires it to be uniform; this law meets neither requirement. I am uncomfortable that supporters of the income tax are so unbothered by it being unconstitutional. So few are insisting we amend the constitution to allow or not do it at all, on the grounds that violating the constitution (or flexibility construing it to match our desired ends) is…

Until there are severe personal penalties for an elected official violating their oath of office with regard to unconstitutional laws, they will simply ignore it. This is doubly true in formerly purple but now uniparty states like Washington where the Supreme Court is completely beholden to the party elite.

We have the same problem at the federal level in part because SCOTUS will not or cannot provide input or warnings on proposed legislation. How many federal laws would simply not exist if SCOTUS got a veto before it went to the President for signing?

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#116

Post by quesera »

bettercallsalad wrote: post #34

As someone who lives in WA, I despise how bad any state government run program here is. Literally it took me 3 months to get a SSN and I couldn’t get hold of anyone. Also on top of this tax, they have this care tax which also taxes 1% of your income for “long term care”. I would love to pay my taxes if I had seen reasonable outcome. So far all I see is a corrupt state government with no accountability and transparenc…

> As someone who lives in WA ... it took me 3 months to get a SSN

States don't issue social security numbers. Your complaint is with the Feds.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#117

Post by pc86 »

kimbernator wrote: post #28
orionsbelt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a beachhead that will expand. The history of income taxes shows that. Once you have established an income tax, the next fight will be to raise it, or lower the income limit, and over years, it will end up covering everyone. The government is incentivized to over spend and then try to dig their way out be expanding taxes, but there is a limit to what you can tax. You want people to vote for a millionaire tax tie…

If that means curbing the comparatively high consumption taxes in WA, then it's for the best. The lowest income brackets pay an outrageous percentage of their income to taxes compared to the upper brackets because of them.

What about this law makes you think any of the revenue is going to be used to curb consumption taxes? Because that's not what any of this money is being earmarked for. Most of it is basically a government slush fund.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#118

Post by alkonaut »

_b wrote: post #64

Washington State’s constitution limits a tax like this to no more 1% and requires it to be uniform; this law meets neither requirement. I am uncomfortable that supporters of the income tax are so unbothered by it being unconstitutional. So few are insisting we amend the constitution to allow or not do it at all, on the grounds that violating the constitution (or flexibility construing it to match our desired ends) is…

Doesn't it just limit property tax to 1% while saying nothing about income tax?

Is it this?

> the aggregate of all tax levies upon real and personal property by the state and all taxing districts now existing or hereafter created, shall not in any year exceed one percent of the true and fair value of such property in money

Asking an AI (I know, I know) it suggests "Courts have ruled that income is property" which to me sounds like ruling up is down. I mean everywhere that has property tax separate from income tax or only one or the other would object...

There was initiative 2111 which seems it wouldn't even be necessary if income tax was against the constitution to begin with? Also I assume this law basically nullifies initiative 2111?

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#119

Post by pc86 »

drdec wrote: post #57
Jemaclus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can i structure my income to avoid income tax? asking for a friend.

A popular technique is to be compensated in options. Don't exercise the options, but take out loans against them.

This is incredibly tech-specific, where most workers make a small fraction of $1M a year.

Physicians don't get options, attorneys don't get options. This is a fairy tale answer not grounded in reality.

Re: WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate

#120

Post by pc86 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #55
bettercallsalad wrote: post #34

As someone who lives in WA, I despise how bad any state government run program here is. Literally it took me 3 months to get a SSN and I couldn’t get hold of anyone. Also on top of this tax, they have this care tax which also taxes 1% of your income for “long term care”. I would love to pay my taxes if I had seen reasonable outcome. So far all I see is a corrupt state government with no accountability and transparenc…

> Also isn’t this illegal? I thought the state constitution says it is illegal. The state constitution treats income as property, and states that property taxes must be uniform. So the bill is actually a state-wide, uniform 9.9% income tax but with the first million dollars exempt. It is expected to be challenged almost immediately in probably a long court battle so we will see what the arguments are. I'm in support…

> I'm a bit miffed that they refused to add language that prohibited lowering the threshold.

Well that's because the entire point of this is just to get a tax on the books so they can later increase the amount and lower the thresholds when all of a sudden this $4B windfall isn't enough.

This is absolutely going to be a lions-eating-faces situation a few years from now when we're talking about a 14.9% tax with a $250,000 exemption.

I'm also genuinely curious how the exemption doesn't by definition make it no longer uniform. How does any exemption at all not violate the uniformity requirement?

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