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

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

#181

Post by salawat » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #169

salawat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Ah, you're one of those.

See, this clever little aphorism of yours is the constantly reached for salve of the "wiseguy". "Everyone would do it if they were in my position; so I'm not going to bother myself about it. Let's work around it."

Problem is, in reality, that isn't the case. Most people will sit there, look at the regulation, realize the development is likely going to attract families or soon-to-be-families, and would realize, yeah. Okay. Need to accommodate that. They approach it in good faith. Then you come along and start acting in bad faith. Your bad faith implementation for maximized extraction creates knock on problems, that create knock on problems, that now are everyone else's problem to solve. Eventually, with a high enough concentration or frequency of such agents, we enter game theory territory, and escalation tends to happen quickly from there.

Historically, this comes with a brand of solutions for people like that. It'd stew to a point, then generally involved an entire community not seeing a damn thing while someone came to physical harm in a tragic accident. Or just straight up Wildcat demonstrations.

Communities/ planners don't want that. So they make regulations that are a good faith attempt at curtailing spirals of reasonably foreseeable problems. A wiseguy comes along and creates reasonably forseen problems through non-compliance.

Are you noticing a pattern yet? You being a bad faith asshat isn't the policy's fault.

That's your fault for being a garbage human being, and maybe just a bit our collective fault for making the world such a comfortable and safe place for humans with garbage mindsets drawn to bad faith in all things business. Nevertheless, the gradient is clear. Do good faith business. Everyone wins. Do bad faith, and you win til it's worth someone's time to ensure you lose.

Too damn smart to learn the virtue of self-restraint, too damn stupid to recognize the threat too many of you pose to everyone else. Or how quickly things go bad once people start catching onto the games you seem to delight in playing.

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

#182

Post by jandrewrogers » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #172

thewebguyd wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, majority isn't big enough. 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 basicall…

Why not just charge it on the paying end (payroll tax)? It would be the same thing but charged from employers. 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.

Washington already has payroll taxes and revenue(!) taxes, which have been increasing. It was causing employers to leave. The State had to limit ambitions on several of these taxes because it was causing businesses to move to other States.

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.

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

#183

Post by croisillon » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 8:59 AM UTC

hagbard_c wrote: post #85

ambicapter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States with massive, growing populations? Must not be as oppressive as stated.

Let's not quibble over the population growth rates of these states which provide welfare to everyone. Instead, let's talk about te tax base which provides this welfare and you'll notice that tax base does not grow nearly as fast and might in fact be shrinking - actual reliable numbers are hard to come by. How many of the newcomers to these states will end up being net providers to the tax base and how many will end u…

hold my beer while i get my check for protesting

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

#184

Post by TheJoeMan » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC

tylerritchie wrote: post #129

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 .

>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.…

Okay, that is good to know thanks for pointing that out.

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

#185

Post by hagbard_c » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

croisillon wrote: post #183

hagbard_c wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not quibble over the population growth rates of these states which provide welfare to everyone. Instead, let's talk about te tax base which provides this welfare and you'll notice that tax base does not grow nearly as fast and might in fact be shrinking - actual reliable numbers are hard to come by. How many of the newcomers to these states will end up being net providers to the tax base and how many will end u…

hold my beer while i get my check for protesting

Apply here: https://crowdsondemand.com/

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.

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

#186

Post by pc86 » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

drdec wrote: post #150

pc86 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what is your answer then?

I don't need an answer to point out that your response is relevant to probably 3 or 4 people every year who:

    - live in Washington State; AND
    - are compensated at least in part in options; AND
    - are compensated in excess of $1M a year; AND
    - are compensated far enough in excess of $1M a year that they are willing to spend time and money lowering that tax liability

But the answer is "you can't, at least not legally" for everyone except those few people.

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

#187

Post by pc86 » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #180

pc86 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction. Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction. As far as I remember from my tax days they are also limited to the difference between the tax you paid for in the originating state and the state you use the item in, much like US federal taxes for citizens abroad. In practice as well, no…

> The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction. Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction.

That's what I understand it to be as well, sorry if that wasn't clear. But to use your washing machine example what business is it of the state where I bought this washing machine? Why does Massachusetts get a percentage cut of this washing machine's purchase price. The electricity is already taxed, the water is already taxed, so hooking up to the grid doesn't seem to be a very good reason.

> In practice as well, no government gives a fuck about regular consumer abuse at that level.

Oh so this is one of those things where the government can just choose to arbitrarily enforce it against entities it doesn't like.

Maybe the government shouldn't be able to pass tens of thousands of pages of law every single year and not enforce them until they decide that you are Bad and, as you put it yourself, "[throw] the book at you." Maybe laws should be like copyright where if the government has a history of not enforcing them, they go away.

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

#188

Post by lovich » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #187

lovich wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction. Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction. As far as I remember from my tax days they are also limited to the difference between the tax you paid for in the originating state and the state you use the item in, much like US federal taxes for citizens abroad. In practice as well, no…

> The Use tax is levied when you bring items from State 1 into State 2 and use it within State 2's jurisdiction. Not State 2 taxing you for using items within State 1's jurisdiction. That's what I understand it to be as well, sorry if that wasn't clear. But to use your washing machine example what business is it of the state where I bought this washing machine? Why does Massachusetts get a percentage cut of this wash…

> But to use your washing machine example what business is it of the state where I bought this washing machine?

It’s their jurisdiction and they made a law for it. I don’t subscribe to libertarian beliefs so it’s not very hard for me to grok.

> Oh so this is one of those things where the government can just choose to arbitrarily enforce it against entities it doesn't like.

Not for 99% of cases although there are times I recognized it gets abused. It’s not enforced on the smaller violations as a result of it taking X amount of dollars to enforce to only get >X dollars in tax revenue. It’s not a vice tax where they are trying to stop behavior but a revenue generator so there is no reason to waste the money.

You get similar behavior in large businesses accounting departments where under a certain value they will just accept the loss instead of spending the time trying to fix discrepancies in their accounts.

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

#189

Post by lostmsu » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

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…

This tax will affect about 1 in 10 new Meta hires in WA: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/meta/salaries/software-engi..., probably 2 in 10 currently employed ones. More if you consider families with 2 working SDEs (not uncommon).

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

#190

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #182

alkonaut wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just charge it on the paying end (payroll tax)? It would be the same thing but charged from employers. 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.

Washington already has payroll taxes and revenue(!) taxes, which have been increasing. It was causing employers to leave. The State had to limit ambitions on several of these taxes because it was causing businesses to move to other States. 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 tha…

What’s the point of trying to push through an income tax if it could have been an easy raise on payroll?