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from the with-the-power-to-tax-comes-the-power-to-destroy dept.
Amazon fails to unseat pro-tax city council members in Seattle
Amazon has suffered a setback in its own backyard as several candidates for Seattle's City Council won election despite a $1.5 million campaign by business groups to defeat them. That included Kshama Sawant, an incumbent and socialist who has been a thorn in Amazon's side in recent years. The vote was held last Tuesday, but the results only became clear in recent days.
The result is significant for Amazon because last year Seattle's city council passed a $275 per employee tax on large employers. Amazon, Starbucks, and other large Seattle businesses blasted the law and funded a ballot measure to overturn it. Facing the threat of having their law overturned by voters, the city council itself repealed the measure a month after it passed.
If business groups had defeated pro-tax candidates in last week's election, it would have made the city council very reluctant to consider taxing employers again. Instead, the election results have emboldened supporters of an "Amazon tax."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @06:07AM (3 children)
Seattle is in Washington.
Washington outlaws (long story, but if you want to read the court cases, they're available) income tax and it would take a constitutional amendment to allow it. The last time various bigwigs tried to do this, it got smacked down pretty hard.
Washington mostly relies upon, as far as the average Joe is concerned, property tax and sales tax. There are additional things like car tab taxes and so on, blahblahblah (they're pretty creative about levying taxes) but income taxes aren't on the list.
Amazon already pays property tax. Turns out, Amazon owns a lot of property in and around Seattle. Amazon's a pretty big taxpayer in Seattle; a fact that was pointed out when they wanted to pass the Amazon tax, and kept running their mouths about how Amazon doesn't pay tax. Turns out, this is complete hogwash.
Amazon also collects sales tax for a lot of people around the state, including all those fancy people in Seattle, who take advantage of their special high speed services and so on. Seattle makes a lot of money off Amazon's economic activities. Seattle also makes a hell of a lot of money off all the Amazon employees, who spend a lot of money in and around Seattle.
All those activists who breathe into paper bags while screaming about Amazon not contributing seem to ignore what would happen to Seattle's tax base without Amazon, but I digress.
As for the per-head tax, besides the fact that it's flat, rather than progressive, it's stupid anyway because the vast majority of Amazon employees are way, way beyond any proposed minimum wage, in Seattle (and the others have no bearing on this situation).
So, yeah, Amazon are pulling the load, and in fact can't get out of it precisely because of how taxes are structured there. In fact, as part of the whole head tax discussion, one of the things that they did was to hit the Pause button on all their construction projects in Seattle, on the logic that if they were going to pay an extra stupid tax specifically made to stick it to them, they were going to stop expanding in Seattle.
Shocking, I know. What bastards. Not lining up to be taxed extra when they have other options right there in front of them. But I digress ...
The people who stood up in front of the council to tell them to cut that shit out? Included trade union reps, spelling out in small, easily digestible words that the city council was fucking things up for the union carpenters, and sheet metal workers, and welders, and pilebucks, and all the rest of them. That's right, the famous socialist boogie-person of the Seattle city council actually had the unions telling her she had fucked up.
And in case you're wondering, Seattle has a high city sales tax, piled on top of a high county sales tax, piled on top of the state sales tax. It's just plain more expensive to buy things in Seattle, which is why if you actually go there, you find quite a lot of businesses sitting juuuuuust outside the reach of greedier taxing authorities. But not Amazon. They're right there in downtown, and are one of the major forces behind economic activity there. This is why there was so much horror when Amazon went looking for HQ 2.0. It's kind of like when Boeing had had enough of the shenanigans of the union in Washington and went shopping around. The heartache and misery had to be heard to be believed, while the workers in pretty much every other industry said: "You idiots, you did it to yourselves."
Of course, then we had things like NYC being all lined up and ready to welcome Amazon, until Ocasio-Cortez flaps her yap about how evil Amazon is, and Amazon turns on their heel and goes looking elsewhere. Why? Because they're evil? No, because they've seen that movie before and they know how it ends.
Rich companies, like rich people, have options. Seattle's city council learned that lesson, not very long ago, then promptly forgot it. If we're very, very lucky, they will actually drive Amazon out of Seattle, along with Adobe, Tableau and others. Let Portland pick them up.
Portland's nice. It has more sunshine. Go there, guys, I'm sure they'd never tax you hard.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @04:22PM
The "left" is now ivory tower dreamers and social justice warriors.
The republicans used to give the working class at least some religious comfort, with President Trump workers finally have someone defending their economic interests.
The democrats meanwhile continue their descent into madness. They can't win when only big city elites and big city welfare dependents vote for them.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 13 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)
You spend a lot of time in your 'Amazon pays taxes' post talking about sales taxes which are definitely NOT paid by Amazon....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:48PM
Didn't you hear about the Amazon online tax lawsuit? It was some years ago, but let me help you out:
Back in the day, Amazon (on the basis of some less-than-clear federal rules) did not collect tax. This resulted in a lot of complaints from bricks-and-mortar sellers who complained that it gave Amazon a de facto price advantage. It ended up in court, but the long story cut short is:
Today, Amazon collects, delivers, and pays sales tax. In fact, Amazon is very good at it. What's more, when they make purchases in the Seattle area (which, duh, they do, a lot) they pay Seattle's sales tax.
... why does this even need to be explained ....