Seattle’s City Council on Monday passed a tax on businesses with annual payrolls of more than $7 million, seeking to restore city revenues depleted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The “JumpStart Seattle” tax will hit applicable companies on their pay to employees who make more than $150,000 a year, with tiered rates ranging from 0.7 percent to 2.4 percent. The upper limit would apply to companies such as Amazon and to salaries of $400,000 or more at firms with $1 billion or more in annual payrolls.
Council member Teresa Mosqueda, who has spearheaded the push, called the 7-2 vote on the measure “a huge win,” adding “this is about caring for Seattleites,” according to The Seattle Times. She compared the measure to Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law, one of the nation’s first, saying both were an example of “supporting our city and our most vulnerable.”
Government institutions and grocery stores would be exempt from the measure, as would some health care nonprofits for at least the first three years the law is in effect.
The council and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan (D) passed a “head tax” with similar provisions, projected to raise revenues of $47 million per year, in 2018, but repealed it weeks later under pressure from major businesses in the area such as Amazon, according to the Seattle Times.
Since then, however, five new council members won against opponents backed by business groups in the city’s 2019 election, and the economic fallout from the pandemic has changed the political calculus.
The two "no" votes, Debora Juarez and Alex Pedersen, called for the bill to instead be an initiative on the November ballot, saying the local economy is currently too fragile for the proposal.
“Seattle has a well-established, democratic tradition of giving voters the final say,” Juarez said, according to the Times.
