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A proposal to tax large businesses in Seattle to pay for housing and homeless services has cleared a council committee and heads to the council for a vote Monday.

The proposal remained largely unchanged Friday after the council rejected several amendments that would have lowered the tax rate or made other major changes.

One amendment backed by Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan would have cut the tax rate in half, to roughly $250 per full-time worker a year. But the council narrowly rejected that.

Under the proposal that advanced out of committee, nearly 600 large employers making at least $20 million in revenue would pay about $500 a year per worker. The tax would raise about $75 million annually.

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http://www.tri-cityherald.com/latest-new...e210964539.html

Nutty Seattle. This tax is not going to raise anything. Business owners like Bezos are not going to sit on their hands and be plundered like this. They will either flee or close their doors.

Update:

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Seattle leaders on Monday unanimously approved a tax on large businesses such as Amazon and Starbucks to fund the fight against homelessness after weeks of heated debate and raucous hearings.

The City Council backed a compromise plan that will charge large businesses about $275 per full-time worker each year, lower than the $500 per worker initially proposed. The so-called head tax would raise about $48 million a year to pay for affordable housing and homeless services.

The debate over who should pay to solve a housing crisis exacerbated by Seattle's rapid economic growth comes amid skyrocketing housing prices and rising homelessness. The Seattle region had the third-highest number of homeless people in the U.S. and saw 169 homeless deaths last year.

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They compromised and made the policy just a little less stupid.

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Just a month after Seattle passed a controversial corporate head tax aimed at Amazon and other large businesses that would have funded homeless programs, the city council voted to rescind the plan Tuesday afternoon. The about-face comes after a ferocious backlash by some of the biggest companies in town.

The vote was taken after more than two hours of heated and emotional testimony on the part of those who support the tax and those who felt it would damage the city's businesses and scare investment away.

The city council's shift comes as many cities, not just Seattle, struggle to deal with rising levels of income inequality, gentrification, homelessness and change wrought by an influx of large numbers of highly paid tech workers. The anger and frustration over this confluence of issues has led some to focus on large tech firms such as Amazon in Seattle or Google in Silicon Valley, as the cause.

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But pushback from Amazon, Starbucks and other large firms resulted in a surprise swerve by the council on Monday, when its president, Bruce Harrell, announced he had scheduled a special meeting on Tuesday about a repeal of the tax.

The unprecedented reversal vote happened even as a campaign called No Tax on Jobs, funded by area businesses, was also preparing to submit petition signatures to qualify for a referendum on the tax for the November ballot. It had gathbbered more than 45,000 signatures, supporters said.

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https://www.kcentv.com/article/news/nati...aa-47e8f1c6e12a

The homeless problem in Seattle (and San Francisco) is the result of a lack of affordable low cost housing and the overly tolerant attitude the city authorities have taken toward the homeless. The crazy Left in that city, exemplified by Kshama Sawant, aren't going into that good night quietly, They will be back.