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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

#121

Post by abracadaniel »

rayiner wrote: post #95
abracadaniel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Rent seeking on their labor and skills Paying people for their work isn’t “rent seeking.” If I hire someone to replace my roof shingles, is that “rent seeking?”

You don’t clear $50m a year by paying people what they’re worth. The wages are unfair, by definition, if there is someone able to skim away that much at the top.

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

#122

Post by pc86 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #93
qup wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything specific you want the money spent on? Or is it just a punish the rich type of support?

Yes. Washington desperately needs infrastructure improvements, our state has not kept up with population growth, especially in areas outside of the Seattle metro. Go north into the Skagit valley or Whatcom county, we have two lane roads over capacity with many fatal accidents each year, power lines still above ground that get taken out year, after year every time we have a wind storm (happens a lot, especially in the…

Even if you don't buy the "job creator" argument, if you're bringing a business and "extracting wealth" you're not earning that wealth as a W2 employee, so this tax won't apply. The best example I can think of for >$1M W2 earners are highly specialized physicians, and maybe some even more specialized (and prolific) attorneys. Aren't they already contributing a lot?

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

#123

Post by tzs »

pc86 wrote: post #72
TheJoeMan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "free" federal tax filing service I use in Florida, makes their money by charging for state filings. It will add an additional hour or two of effort to every resident of the state, even if they are below the state income threshold which is quite an externality. Also, I would be wary bragging about buying your goods in Oregon, you technically may owe WA use tax https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax .

This is one of those things that I question the legality of, but it will never get answered because nobody is going to the Supreme Court over sales tax. I can understand the argument of me sitting at home in State 1, buying something online, and having it delivered to me in State 1, and owing State 1 some sales tax on that. It is absolutely no business of State 1's what I do when I travel into State 2. Whether or not…

> This is one of those things that I question the legality of, but it will never get answered because nobody is going to the Supreme Court over sales tax

Someone did go the Supreme Court over sales tax on property bought out of state. Henneford v. Silas Mason Co., Inc., 300 US 577 (1937). Text here [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/300/577

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

#124

Post by garbawarb »

collabs wrote: post #100
qup wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say they get plenty of money already. The amount of fraud and grift is incredible anytime tax money is being spent. Defense contractors, road works, entitlement fraud, politicians' unexplainable wealth, college tuition, learing centers, and the list goes on. Manage the money properly.

The time to talk about these things is when we spend them, not when we need to pay for them though. 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 wen…

Another option is to increase the tax base. Washington has had high population growth this century which has been great for revenues.

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

#125

Post by dwaltrip »

pc86 wrote: post #72
TheJoeMan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "free" federal tax filing service I use in Florida, makes their money by charging for state filings. It will add an additional hour or two of effort to every resident of the state, even if they are below the state income threshold which is quite an externality. Also, I would be wary bragging about buying your goods in Oregon, you technically may owe WA use tax https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax .

This is one of those things that I question the legality of, but it will never get answered because nobody is going to the Supreme Court over sales tax. I can understand the argument of me sitting at home in State 1, buying something online, and having it delivered to me in State 1, and owing State 1 some sales tax on that. It is absolutely no business of State 1's what I do when I travel into State 2. Whether or not…

What’s the reasoning? If you were a business, would your opinion change?

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

#126

Post by thewebguyd »

pc86 wrote: post #120
thewebguyd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> 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?

That's the part that I'm assuming is going to get fought out in court when this is inevitably challenged. The state will likely try to argue that it's not a property tax, but an excise tax. They used that argument in support of the capital gains tax, and won (Quinn vs. Washington State, 2023), stating that the tax was an excise tax on the privilege of selling assets. The WA supreme court ruled that the tax was a permissible excise tax and not a property tax, so did not run afoul of the constitution.

They'll likely argue that the millionaire tax is an excise tax on the privilege of participating in the state's economy.

Alternatively, they may try to define high income as a new class of property. Property taxes only have to be uniform within a specific class of property, so if they create a new class, then it would be uniform for that class.

Should be an interesting court battle.

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

#127

Post by garbawarb »

lostmsu wrote: post #105
OnionBlender wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To where?

We settled on Canada for their decent PISA scores. Singapore would have been the top choice, but it has very high immigration barriers.

Are drugs in high schools really a problem in WA? Where are you in Canada and how does it compare?

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

#128

Post by tzs »

On Nextdoor here (Puget Sound area but on the other side of the water from Seattle) there are a lot of people who (1) post a lot about how property taxes and gasoline taxes are too high, (2) complain about any cuts to government services, and (3) oppose any effort to tax income even if the threshold is way way way higher than anything they or anyone they know will ever come near on the grounds that at some future time the threshold could be removed.

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

#129

Post by tylerritchie »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #38
kimbernator wrote: post #19

I grew up in WA and as much as I enjoyed the lack of income tax, it's factual that until recently they held the title of #1 most regressive state tax system nationwide (recently bumped to #2 by FL). Income taxes are much better distributed among income brackets than consumption taxes are. I grew up just over the river from Portland, where there is no state sales tax; we got to enjoy the best of both worlds by crossin…

The "free" federal tax filing service I use in Florida, makes their money by charging for state filings. It will add an additional hour or two of effort to every resident of the state, even if they are below the state income threshold which is quite an externality. Also, I would be wary bragging about buying your goods in Oregon, you technically may owe WA use tax https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax .

>It will add an additional hour or two of effort to every resident of the state, even if they are below the state income threshold which is quite an externality.

Nope, that is false. The language of the bill only requires filing if tax is owed. There will be a handful of folks on the cusp who will need to calculate their AGI to determine their state tax liability but everyone else knows offhand if they need to file.

The language is "Individuals not owing tax under this chapter are not required to file a return..."

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

#130

Post by thewebguyd »

pc86 wrote: post #122
thewebguyd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Washington desperately needs infrastructure improvements, our state has not kept up with population growth, especially in areas outside of the Seattle metro. Go north into the Skagit valley or Whatcom county, we have two lane roads over capacity with many fatal accidents each year, power lines still above ground that get taken out year, after year every time we have a wind storm (happens a lot, especially in the…

Even if you don't buy the "job creator" argument, if you're bringing a business and "extracting wealth" you're not earning that wealth as a W2 employee, so this tax won't apply. The best example I can think of for >$1M W2 earners are highly specialized physicians, and maybe some even more specialized (and prolific) attorneys. Aren't they already contributing a lot?

> The best example I can think of for >$1M W2 earners are highly specialized physicians, and maybe some even more specialized (and prolific) attorneys. Aren't they already contributing a lot?

That depends on how much they are consuming within the state and paying sales tax. If they are W2 earners, they aren't contributing via B&O tax like businesses do, and so essentially they just contribute the same as anyone else in the state, via all the other regressive taxes, just proportional to how much money they spend.

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