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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

#71

Post by abracadaniel »

rayiner wrote: post #25
SecretDreams wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tax would apply only on the amount of income above the $1 million threshold, so a person making $1.5 million, for example, would be taxed on the final $500,000. It would apply to an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 households in the state, with collections beginning in 2029 on the previous year’s income. It's a sliding scale tax. Someone making a million will barely feel it. Someone making 50 million will feel it a l…

> 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.

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

#72

Post by pc86 »

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 .

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 I buy something and/or the value of that purchase should not enrich State 1 in any way. The only reasonable exception I can think of is if I'm buying things to bring back and resell.

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

#73

Post by pc86 »

mtoner23 wrote: post #29
calvinmorrison wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the great thing about sales tax is rich people spend a lot of money on dumb shit

Not relative to their income tho. Sales taxes are regressive and get more money from the poor

They get less money from the poor but it's a higher percentage of that person's income. There is a difference.

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

#74

Post by kimbernator »

limagnolia wrote: post #62
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…

In Missouri, the current proposal is to put it up to a vote, so Missourians will decide what they want. There are safguards builtin where the income tax is only phased out if there is revenue to replace it. Its an interesting experiment setup. ** The way to make a consumption tax progresive is with a prebate, or if you want to be more complicated, a rebate. With a prebate, every citizen or resident would recieve a ch…

Given the experience I've had with MO's legislature, I don't have a lot of trust in them to do anything that directly reflects the majority desire. Ultimately they have clearly shown a preference towards Republican dogma than democratic norms, so I fully expect the income tax removal to go through regardless of the balance sheet.

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

#75

Post by alreadyleftWA »

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…

[dead]

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

#76

Post by SecretDreams »

mil22 wrote: post #61
SecretDreams wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tax would apply only on the amount of income above the $1 million threshold, so a person making $1.5 million, for example, would be taxed on the final $500,000. It would apply to an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 households in the state, with collections beginning in 2029 on the previous year’s income. It's a sliding scale tax. Someone making a million will barely feel it. Someone making 50 million will feel it a l…

It's not about whether rich people should or should not feel it. It's not about whether they should or should not be taxed heavily. This isn't a normative question - it's about incentives and mobility. It's about what their alternatives are, where they choose to be domiciled, what job-creating businesses they take with them, and what effect that has on the state's economy over the long term. As it is, California and…

> Florida and Texas have no state income tax and have been the largest net recipients of domestic migrants for several years.

Rich people don't like taxes or paying back into the systems they abused to get rich. Water is also wet.

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

#77

Post by pc86 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #39
hectdev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Texas. People move here and are flabbergasted by our property taxes.

Tax rates under 2% of property value should not "flabbergast" anyone. I prefer a state having a high property tax rate and cheap housing over an income tax. I'm sure most Texans do, too.

How about a high property tax rate and expensive housing? Because that's what you'll get in all the desirable areas of Texas.

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

#78

Post by ihsw »

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…

[dead]

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

#79

Post by SecretDreams »

rayiner wrote: post #49
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.

> I don't understand how anyone in good conscience can vote against this tax 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 coun…

The income disparity between Germany and California is gargantuan as you approach the top percentiles.

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).

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

#80

Post by gbacon »

SecretDreams wrote: post #20
garbawarb wrote: post #6

When I was a new grad moving to the US and deciding where to live and work, the biggest draw of Seattle was its lack of income tax. Of course this particular $1 million threshold wouldn't apply to me until I'm very late in my career, or have a lucky year, or get married to a high-income person (the $1 million threshold applies to married couples, not just individuals) but Seattle loses a lot of its appeal if it's not…

> The tax would apply only on the amount of income above the $1 million threshold, so a person making $1.5 million, for example, would be taxed on the final $500,000. It would apply to an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 households in the state, with collections beginning in 2029 on the previous year’s income. It's a sliding scale tax. Someone making a million will barely feel it. Someone making 50 million will feel it a l…

> Someone making a million will barely feel it.

Easy for you to say.

> Objectively, anyone making $50 million should feel it a lot and be taxed heavily.

How is that objectively true? Why should they?

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