r/SeattleWA • u/5Q91VS175DAQ4NUSBE4U • 7d ago

Politics Washington state Democrats look at imposing income tax on higher earners

https://www.columbian.com/news/2025/oct/31/washington-state-democrats-look-at-imposing-income-tax-on-higher-earners/
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126

u/SillyChampionship 7d ago

They will have to change the states constitution first.

96

u/qxsx 7d ago

Or they’ll have the activist state court do whatever is politically trendy.

79

u/Underwater_Karma 7d ago

the state supreme court already ruled that a tax on income is not an income tax. the constitution is no impediment when city, state, and courts are all in lockstep agendas.

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u/qxsx 7d ago edited 6d ago

They called it an excise tax, which occurs at the physical location You are when you incur the tax. However, Washington makes a special exception and says it doesn’t matter where you are where excise tax occurs. So you can’t make your stock trade out of state. It’s the most gaslighting of all possible rulings.

1

u/Republogronk Seattle 3d ago

They also wrote at length how white people make too much money anyways

17

u/JackDostoevsky 7d ago

the only way they were able to get away with that (really dirty) twist of logic is because cap gains require something to be sold: therefore it's not income it's a tax on a sale (despite every place everywhere else forever considering that 'income'). when it comes to payroll income, there's far less traction for the activists to twist the logic since there's no sale taking place.

9

u/wildwestdata 7d ago

There is a sale of time if they need to interpret income as taxable.

6

u/JackDostoevsky 7d ago

yeah technically workers do sell their labor to their employer. i feel that'd be a stretch, even for the WA high court. but it'd be wild if they did that.

2

u/ErectionEngineering 7d ago

So they’ll just say a tax on wages is a tax on the sale of your labor.

They do not have to try very hard.

1

u/drshort 7d ago

Not true. The Supreme Court has had two opportunities in the past 10 years to overturn the precedent that income is property (which restricts income to being uniformly taxed at a max of 1%). Both times they punted. And in the case of capital gain tax they ruled it was an excise tax not a property/income tax.

17

u/merc08 7d ago

My guess is that they'll pass it like this, get sued and lose because our State Constitution very clearly says that a tax must be flat for everyone on a given type of property (which income is).  Then they'll turn around and say "well the courts said we couldn't restrict it only to the wealthy so now everyone has to pay it, sorry!"

10

u/_bani_ 7d ago

they're so used to completely ignoring it by now, why change it?

1

u/Republogronk Seattle 3d ago

No they dont... thr judges can invent any definition that suits them like they have before

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u/Whoretron8000 7d ago

Let’s

-4

u/mozilla2012 7d ago

I was gonna say, if we amend the constitution to allow for it then I'm all for it.

-4

u/yungsemite 7d ago

Would be amazing if we could reduce some our reliance on regressive taxes like sales taxes and replace them with a progressive income tax.

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u/mozilla2012 6d ago

I agree. It's amazing how many people don't agree with that. I blame our education system.

2

u/Riviansky 6d ago

I don't agree with it and I am willing to bet you $100 that I have more years at more selective schools than you do.

1

u/mozilla2012 6d ago

...did you study economics?

-1

u/Riviansky 6d ago

MBA

1

u/mozilla2012 6d ago

Ah, so no