FOX: The Seattle City Council on Monday approved a pared-down version of the “head tax” on the metro area’s largest employers to fund efforts to battle homelessness despite public criticism from local businesses, including e-commerce giant Amazon.
Approved by a vote of 8-1 on the amended version, the measure will go into effect in January 2019 and tax companies that earn $20 million or more in annual sales 14 cents per employee hour, or $275 per employee annually. The tax is expected to raise roughly $50 million per year toward outreach efforts for the homeless, including affordable housing and emergency shelter.
Proponents on the city council reluctantly agreed to reduce the scope of the bills, which originally called for a tax of 26 cents per employee hour to raise about $75 million annually. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan had vowed to veto the larger tax.
While supporters said the head tax was necessary to fund efforts to address a housing crisis and rising homelessness in the city, the measure was met with near-universal opposition from businesses, as well as the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. more here
You know what would be really funny, and I’m not a Bezos fan. Amazon is about to take every floor of of a newly built tower in Seattle, and he is not happy with this. He can easily afford to keep his lease, then open the entire tower to the homeless for free. Then, take his business to another state.
‘Head Tax’? … does that mean if Pornie Daniels comes to town she’ll get taxed for her ‘performances’?
$50 million.. for the homeless
Gee Wally why ya think the homeless population is exploding?
‘affordable housing’ for the homeless? … how much do they make panhandling?
… & wouldn’t they no longer be ‘homeless’ w/ ‘affordable housing’? … & eligible to be taxpayers? (oh! the horror!)
oh, what a tangled web we weave ….
This nonsense was enough for me to get back on Twitter and tweet for the first time in a long time. Bezos can move out of Seattle and start building skyscrapers in Redmond or Bellevue. Lotsa Amazonians live on the east side and would be happy to not commute across i90 or 520 into Seattle anymore. The east side of the lake is considerably less radical and there’s an occasional R here and there.
So, is Amazon Prime going up to $275?
What a bunch of socialist do gooders for nobody idiot dipsh*ts that infest the Seattle City Council. 🤯
HQ2 anyone?
Is that tax for GIVING or GETTING head…inquiring minds want to know.
Wow. Heard a giant sucking sound coming from the north. Thought it was a whole gaggle of 747s flying over Portland. Turns out it was the Seattle bum vacuum firing up for the fist time. Who knew?
Socialism is great till you run out of other people’s money.
If I was Amazon I’d gift the 50 acres to Seattle for a homeless city, write it off and move to the Eastdside – Bellevue or Bothell. Seattle has lied and given tax breaks to many Corporations to come to the City but they offer no parking, and the bus system sucks. Sooner or later Corporate flight will take bidness back to the Eastside, I guarantee it.
eternal cracker. Ha, we spend over 200 million per year, this is extra money they can give away. Oh and free Heroin to boot.
Not one thing will change, in two years they will want more money,bet on it.
We will have more crime and less say in how our money is spent, because they know best.
And that is why we are leaving one of the most beautiful cities in America, it’s a shame; if you have never been here you don’t understand.
It has been our home that we love and we are sad to leave.
Now would be a good time to invest in a Seattle moving company stock.
carter they will all leave. And not give them a dime, let alone 50 acre’s. Boeing ring a bell.
carter are you in Seattle or the area?
The handwriting is on the wall for Seattle businesses: MOVE OUT.
The $50M won’t be enough and they WILL raise the tax. Start planning to move now rather than later. Take it from a native Seattleite.
Good. Time for all the corporations that bankroll the DNC and the batcrap crazy liberal social agenda to get what’s coming to them.
Yes Geoff, dumb enough to be in the area and smart enough to not live in Martin Luther King County. I left when they wanted people to set aside a portion of their own land for habitat.
@Geoff We are sticking it out for now. There was a serious discussion recently about moving back to Ohio but all parties involved decided it wasn’t the best idea. I think as Far East I could go would be Denver.
Maybe, just maybe, the liberals who work at Amazon will have a flash of sanity that this tax and the Seattle City Council’s plans to fix homelessness and heroin is just a ruse to get more money. They will be the ones to witness if throwing more money at the problem makes their walk into work or their lunchtime travels more safe or not.
Vagrants used to be taken outside city limits and told to never come back.
Geoff, looking to leave Chicagoland myself.. wife won’t have it though. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her how screwed up it is here. Indiana, the shithole it is, right next door is a bargain by comparison.
There’s nothing stopping Amazon and others from throwing the “head” tax on their employees – noting that Seattle is charging them for having a job there. Assuming the employees do vote, it might indicate a big change in who gets elected the next time.
Of course, there’s always the chance that such a specific tax is in-constitutional.
Just for the heck of it – where, exactly, does the city plan to build this “affordable housing” – somewhere on the outskirts of the city? How do they plan on moving the now homeless there – by gunpoint? Maybe they like living on the street close to their drug dealers and the people they scam.
Scam. The whole thing is a scam.
Amazon is going to build HQ2 that equals the size of HQ1. Over 200 cities submitted bids and offer huge state tax cuts and other benefits. Seattle will have more homeless when Amazon moves out.
Seattle was nice in 99, phuckem now.
Soooooo … “We were gonna cut out your heart, but we decided to JUST cut out your left ventricle.”
Funny part is, no company HAS to stay! Sycophancy and lick-spittle-ness only go so far.
izlamo delenda est …
Washington is well on it’s way to become a feudal state, like California.
The rich live on the castle coast, all the serfs live inland and the tradesmen middle class have left the building.
If that aint feudal, guess I misunderstand the system.
Credit V D Hanson for this revelation.
Hey cracker,
I live in Indiana. It’s not a shithole.
Gary is the only shithole city in our beautiful state…And that’s closer to Chicago more than anything.
We have a republican controlled state senate and house, republican gov, all but 2 republican congressmen/women, and one democrat senator about to be thrown out on his ass in november…
Indiana is also a solid red state.
We also have a huge surplus, jobs all around, and we can carry our guns anywhere we want to. Good luck with ANY that in Chicago.
For a government to be legitimate it may only do what individuals can morally do for themselves. for example; I have a right to defend myself and my family, therefore it is legitimate for the government to fund a police force or military to defend the country.
I can not morally nor legally walk around my local community and by threat of violence take money away from the people who earned it to pay my monthly rent or house payment. The city government of Seattle can make it legal to do so, but it remains an immoral act, and makes the government illegitimate, it is nothing more than mob rule, and in need of being overthrown, peacefully or otherwise.
@Blink May 15, 2018 at 1:42 pm
> therefore it is legitimate for the government to fund a police force or military to defend the country
> The … government … can make it legal to do so, but it remains an immoral act, and makes the government illegitimate
What is the moral reaction to the “legitimate” government forces, that loyally perpetrate “illegitimate” acts?
@Hoosierguy45: I second that! Indiana has been great place to live, and I don’t say that just because I escaped California to get here.
Prop taxes shooting up in WA….. leftwing causes. Sickening. It’s not Jersey, but it’s WAY too high. I want to sell. Get a ranch in WY.