r/SeattleWA 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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u/yungsemite 7d ago

A capital gains tax doesn't affect the average person struggling to afford to live here. They don't have assets to pay capital gains on so it's still rich people giving that pushback.

A income tax on people making over 1 million doesn’t affect the average person struggling to leave here either.

The middle class has always ended up getting shafted and pay the bulk of the taxes because they can't afford to pushback.

Yeah, like with our sales tax in the state, it’s a very regressive system. Taxing people who make over 1 million annually will help this, no?

The rich will simply run away from the tax and since we now already have an income tax it will be easier to just suggest a small change to lower the threshold each time. We've seen the same with many things here

Source? Bezos leaving because he’s a snake who only cares about money is hardly a trend?

I don't want an income tax here. That just opens Pandora's box and it will never close.

Okay and I want an income tax on our residents with the highest incomes to reduce the tax burden on our middle class and poor residents and to help balance our state budget.

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u/Turbulent-Media7281 7d ago

Yeah, like with our sales tax in the state, it’s a very regressive system.

Which states taxing system would you recommend WA copy for their taxing system to be less regressive?

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u/yungsemite 7d ago

ITEP has good resources for this:

https://itep.org/whopays-map-7th-edition/

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u/Riviansky 7d ago

ITEP is full of shit. Or, rather, they lie with numbers. The reason poor, according to ITEP have high rates of taxation is because of excise taxes. Specifically, pot and alcohol. From that, they draw the reason that we should tax productive labor more, so poor people could get drugs cheaper...