On Wednesday, May 31, we unfurled banners bearing thousands of petition cards around the whole perimeter of the council chambers, while an “overwhelming number of people” spoke in favor of a progressive income tax on Seattle’s wealthiest households to fund urgent needs.
This week we are putting the finishing touches on the legislation, and next Wednesday, June 14th, there will be a special council meeting and public hearing where the councilmembers discuss the ordinance for the first time and the people have a chance to testify having seen it.
So far we’re making all the right enemies: the Washington Policy Center, Freedom Foundation, Republican legislators in Olympia, Rob McKenna, the Seattle Times editorial board… but we don’t know who else might come out of the woodwork next Wednesday. It’s up to us to show our councilmembers that we have their backs as they consider this groundbreaking legislation:
Special Meeting & Public Hearing on Progressive Income Tax
Wednesday, June 14
5:00 PM Council Discussion
Public hearing to follow
Council Chambers, Seattle City Hall
Income taxes are unconstitutional in the state of Washington.
So the argument goes, repeated year after year by the lapdogs of the rich. It is certainly a fact that the Washington State Constitution provides that property must be taxed equally, and therefore those whose property is worth more cannot be taxed at a higher rate than everyone else. Thus in the 1930s a conservative judiciary shot down an overwhelmingly popular income tax referendum on the dubious and tortured legal argument that income = property, flying in the face of every virtually every established method of accounting.
I suppose it should come as no surprise that the reason and social responsibility of the wealthy take the backseat when a portion of their income is at stake. Anyway, it’s high time such shoddy legal arguements are challenged and toppled once and for all, as they have been in other states. And given the progressive composition of the current judiciary, our lawyers think we stand an excellent chance.
Well if you think it is only going to be a tax on the rich only than you are a fool. They will find a way to make everyone pay. I am glad I live in the South End.