Absolutely depressing. It sets a precedent that businesses own this city and can control everything. This was a tax of something like 0.2% on Uwajimaya and Dicks Burgers and only effected companies making $20mil+ in revenue and only impacted their Seattle workers. It wasn't a tax on individuals, it wasn't coming out of individuals paychecks.

While I fully agree that the city should've had a detailed plan for where this money was going to effectively help the homeless/low income, do people really think these companies would have just been like "yeah, this looks good" and cut a check annually? No.

This is a sad outcome for the city of Seattle in my opinion. The sky didn't fall after the $15 minimum wage passed, and it didn't fall after the head tax was originally passed a month ago.

I think economists generally agree that a flat per-head tax is regressive and bad policy.

If you're going to tax workers, why not a progressive income tax?

This is a tax on the company. This is not a direct tax on workers. A flat tax on people I agree is bad policy. This is not that. It isn't even a flat tax on companies as requires the company to have a large minimum amount of revenue.

Increased tax on large profitable companies in another form would also be fine.

The thing is, it wasn't taxing workers. It was taxing businesses. This was _not_ coming out of workers paychecks. Income tax is illegal per the WA state constitution.