WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by rayiner » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

keybored wrote: post #160

mil22 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer. That they can become exploiters themselves is usually not a convincing argument to them. It’s also like telling someone with just eighty bucks to their name and debt up to their ears that they can try to win the lottery.

> The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer.

That’s irrational.

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

#162

Post by keybored » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #161

keybored wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer. That they can become exploiters themselves is usually not a convincing argument to them. It’s also like telling someone with just eighty bucks to their name and debt up to their ears that they can try to win the lottery.

> The comment you’re responding to claims that wage labor is exploitation on the part of the employer. That’s irrational.

And OP said “If that's the way you see it,” i.e. given the premise, “you are also free to do so.”

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

#163

Post by SecretDreams » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #158

SecretDreams wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California and WA are similar in income distributions to what I quoted. Seattle is more extreme. Very affluent at the top. Can't comment how total tax in Germany might compare to the current discussion.

> California and WA are similar in income distributions to what I quoted Yes, but Washington’s proposed income tax is extremely skewed, while California’s is pretty flat.

Would you prefer WA keep their current proposal but also just add extra percentages/tiers for lower incomes? Would it help keep affluent people from leaving if they knew lower income people are suffering a bit too?

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

#164

Post by RhysU » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

evanelias wrote: post #135

pc86 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm sure we can find places with higher property taxes than those New Jersey examples.

I don't understand your point or why you are sure of that? New Jersey consistently ranks as having the highest average property tax rate of any state, and it also has relatively high income tax rates. This is mainly caused by having a ridiculous number of tiny towns and tiny school districts, each with redundant services and employees.

Redundant may be a strong word. NJ ranks at the top of the states for public schools, e.g. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

NJ has effectively a publicly operated system of private schools where the tuition is the tax burden.

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

#165

Post by tzs » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #144

dwaltrip wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Going from a high tax state to a low tax state to purchase goods is not substantially different than going from a state with strict anti-abortion laws to a state with very pro-abortion laws to get an abortion. One is economic, one is healthcare, both boil down to "I shouldn't have to tell the government what I do outside of that government's jurisdiction." I'd rather people have the freedom to vote with their wallets…

That tax is a "use" tax. It is basically for having/using things in the state that you didn't pay state sales tax on.

You don't have to tell the state why no sales tax was paid--maybe you bought it in another state but maybe you bought it at a garage sale or from someone on Craigslist or something like that that doesn't collect sales tax.

The use tax is only legal if it is complementary to the sales tax (which means that the total you pay cannot be more than the sales tax rate) so that if you did buy it out of state and paid sales tax in that state your state can only charge you the difference between what the sales tax would have been in state and what you paid to the other state.

That does mean that you will have to tell the state where you got it if you want to get the reduced use tax rate, but as a practical matter most people only pay use tax on items that they have to tell the state about anyway, such as cars, where they will be telling the state that information even if no use tax is owed.

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

#166

Post by rozap » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

lvspiff wrote: post #11

Living in Portland I meet SOOOO many tech people that live across the river in Vancouver just because of the income tax - WA has none - OR has a healthily number of them (5 lines worth of various taxes show up on my paystub). Bigger impact im sure will be Seattle but the impact to Portland is not insignificant. I'm sure the WA tax would be less than the OR one though so I don't see the moves stopping, but probably ak…

These people are literal leeches on society. Like I get it, nobody likes paying tax. But the simple fact is: if society would crumble due to everyone acting the way you act, then you're a leech. Whether it's paying taxes, running scams, or doing crime.

It's frustrating to me that people shirk responsibility for their actions when they act in the way that economic models would predict. As if acting like a rational agent within a system voids any responsibility you have as a member of society.

See any/all of the following and tell me how often you hear similar lines of thinking among techies:

  * "Well, I can get rich quick by running this scam, and it's not technically illegal, so, me being a rational agent, I'll run this scam"

  * "Sure, Facebook may be contributing in large part to the downfall of western society but those RSUs taste so sweet"

  * "I'll use the Oregon infrastructure but if I live across the river then I don't have to pay for it. And I can buy things without sales tax in Oregon!"

In short: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."

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

#167

Post by silexia » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

Washington lifer here. Considering our Democrat Governor and AG have said they would prosecute any journalist who wants to look into fraud this is horrifying. The budget has grown massively in the last two decades with nothing to show for it.

Howard Schultz just left.

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

#168

Post by rozap » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

_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…

Agree. The constitution should be amended, then we should pass something like this.

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

#169

Post by adam_arthur » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #157

adam_arthur wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with that specific example, but I do know that independent players in any economic system will follow the incentives. Expecting companies, people etc to do the "right thing" when it's financially disincentivized usually doesn't work out. Same will happen in regards to all these new taxes reinforcing existing population migration trends.

The system is simple. Your development hits a certain size, you have to build and fund a school for the community through fees if you're renting. So they go just short of the line, and crap out two developments and no schools, and leave the populace to figure out the rest. That isn't following incentives. That's being an asshat.

No, it's bad policy.

Cliffs in policies will always lead to players working around the cliffs.

E.g. in NYC there is an additional 1% sales tax on home sales above 1 million dollars.

So nobody in the market would ever sell a home between 1m and 1.01m as the tax increase is greater than the sales price.

These are failed policy implementations (in the above example the tax should be marginal, not thresholded)

Any policy which does not account for individual actors optimizing financially is a badly designed policy.

There are numerous similar examples re: CRE when requiring subsidized housing units for certain sizes of development. Often it's more lucrative to build smaller and get around subsidized unit requirements.

You can call them "asshats", but I'd rather live and discuss policy in reality.

Many of these new, clearly strictly punitively intended, taxes aimed at the wealthy will have the same logical outcome.

Show me the incentive and I'll show you the result

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

#170

Post by tzs » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

quesera wrote: post #116

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.

States do however issue the documents that you might need to present to the Social Security Administration. Maybe he had trouble getting those?

Speaking of documents, here's a tip. Use your name as it appears on your birth certificate on any government forms even if nobody ever calls you by that name. Also probably a good idea to use it when you sign up for utilities, on rental and lease agreements, property deeds, and medical records.

The SSA is real picky about names. Even if no one ever in your entire life has called you anything other than "Rob", if your birth certificate says "Robert" and that is what was on the form when you got your SSN assigned shortly after your birth if you ever need a replacement card they are not going to be happy with documents that say "Rob".