The city across Lake Washington to my west is tied with San Francisco for the 9th highest combined sales tax rate in the United States, beating out 98 other large cities. Many in Seattle worked hard for this, and they have a right to be proud of their success. (Though they may be a little embarrassed to be beaten for the top spot by two Alabama cities, Birmingham and Montgomery.)
No doubt, given Seattle's favorable demographics — high levels of education and income and few children and elderly poor — the city has bought superb services with this high tax rate. I am sure that Seattle's schools are the envy of the whole state, that the streets are in superb condition, that the basic infrastructure has not been neglected, that any homeless problems have solved, that street gangs are nonexistent, that congestion is at most a minor problem, and that the libraries have extended their hours and services. With that amount of revenue, how could it be otherwise?
Majorities in Seattle have been so proud of this accomplishment that they have shared it with the rest of us living in King County, so that our sales taxes are also quite high. (Oddly enough, the county is threatening to cut services, in spite of this flood of revenue. Or continue to cut services, I should say, since the county has given up a number of services in recent years.)
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(Washington state, including Seattle, exempts food and drugs from the sales tax. You can find details on the tax rules in an annoying video here, or in this Wikipedia article (with the usual Wikipedia caveats).
Posted by Jim Miller at August 24, 2010 09:05 AM | Email This
And I thought we had it bad here in Dallas at 8.25%
Posted by: acuvue oasys on August 24, 2010 12:17 PMAnd I thought we had it bad here in Dallas at 8.25%
Posted by: acuvue oasys on August 24, 2010 12:18 PMJust wondering, Jim -- what fraction of that sales tax goes to the Seattle school district?
Posted by: scottd on August 24, 2010 12:48 PMIndeeed, the same website that you got this shocking data from also says that Washington ranks 35th among states for overall tax burden. (They don't break it down by city and their latest data is for 2008, but this ranking is certainly more meaningful than the one you cite.)
Posted by: Bruce on August 24, 2010 01:23 PMOther selected Washington 'Hall of Shame' rankings:
State Business Tax Climate Index, 2010 overall 9th, not bad,but let's make that worse with an income tax!
Tax Freedom Day by State, 2009 April 16th, 6th worst
State Tax Collections Per Capita, 2008 16th worst
State and Local Revenues Per Capita, 2007 17th worst
State Individual Income Tax Rates No ranking, yet
State General Sales and Use Tax Rates 9th worst
State General Sales Tax Collections Per Capita, 2008 We're Number Two! Yea!!
Combined State & Local Sales Tax Rates We're Number Three!
State and Local General and Selective Sales Tax Collections Per Capita, 2007 Again, we're Number Two! Yea!!
State Gasoline Tax Rates 6th worst
State Spirits Excise Tax Rates We're Number One! Yea!!
State and Local Debt Per Capita 6th worst
Let me suggest you look a little farther. Like Washington, Texas has no income tax. The largest city in Texas is Houston. Compare their tax rates to ours -- which you can, using the Wikipedia article -- to ours, and then come back and tell us what you found.
Incidentally, Texas has had exceptional employment growth over the last decade. If the rest of the nation had performed as well, we might have missed this last recession entirely. It certainly would have been much milder.
No doubt there is at least one person on the left who has said that the nation could learn something from Texas (or New Hampshire) -- it's a big country, after all -- but there haven't been many on the left willing to learn from those successes. Or even to recognize them.
Posted by: Jim Miller on August 24, 2010 04:14 PMAlso, I noticed you skipped these numbers:
State Revenues per capita...25
State and Local Tax Burden As a Percentage of
State Income...35
Property Taxes on Owner-Occupied Housing
as Percentage of Median Home Value....25
State and Local Property Tax Collections
Per Capita...27
Income Per Capita by State...8
My point? It all depends on what statistics you want to look at, doesn't it?
Posted by: KB on August 24, 2010 06:30 PMYeah! And maybe if we had Detroit's tax rate, we could get Detroit's growth!
Oh... wait.
Sorry, Jim. You're not quite connecting the dots here.
Posted by: demo kid on August 24, 2010 07:22 PMUm, did y'all 'buy' my version of a liberal?? Do I get an Oscar?
Posted by: Michele on August 24, 2010 07:44 PMObamanomics sucks the big one !
Posted by: KDS on August 24, 2010 09:08 PMSo let's see... Adobe sets up a subsidiary office in Utah and it's "leaving the state"? By that logic, Facebook "left" Palo Alto for Seattle...
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/05/there-goes-the-neighborhood-facebook-to-open-seattle-office/
Posted by: demo kid on August 24, 2010 09:22 PMBut hey, why talk rationally when you can lapse into babbling Obama Derangement Syndrome?
Posted by: demo kid on August 24, 2010 09:27 PMIf Seattle existed in a vacuum, that might be true. But we have to ship large amounts of our money to the impoverished portions of Washington State, via the state government, and to the impoverished interior states, via the federal government. These massive transfers of our hard-earned wealth to the parasitical Eastern Washington and freeloading 'red' states diminish our ability to provide for ourselves as we might choose. We keep hoping those regions will embrace their own individualistic, free-market slogans, but they never seem to do so. Perhaps you could help them to see the error of their ways, Jim?
If not, could you please stop their bawling when we ask them to refrain from feeding at our plate? Thanks!
Posted by: tensor on August 24, 2010 11:10 PMAs a patriotic American with a civic mind, I have no problem supporting my fellow Washingtonians with my tax dollars. One of the first votes I ever cast in this state was to increase the fees I paid for my telephone service, so as to provide "9/11" service to Eastern Washington.
Since then, I have watched as my state and federal taxes have gone to support the inland portions of Washington State and America. All I ever seem to get in return is sneering, insulting, hate-filled rhetoric about how my tolerance for my fellow gay Americans makes me a "filthy degenerate", who is "destroying America" with my "immorality". Although political leaders in such places commit adultery with the same (or greater) frequency than do my own elected officials, this dismal reality never seems to enter into the rhetoric I have above described.
In return for my generous financial support, I do not expect gratitude, only civility. Please explain to me why I am wrong to do so.
Posted by: tensor on August 25, 2010 12:22 AMNow imagine paying all the sales tax, & real estate taxes PLUS 10s of thousands in B&O tax (which I doubt you're paying) plus another few thousand in something called "Personal property tax" that I also doubt you're paying, because I never saw charges for such until we owned a business. There are those of us who are paying MUCH MORE than a few dollars in phone tax and really ARE holding up this state financially. What do WE get from you libs out there? "Sneering, insulting hate-filled rhetoric" about how business "exploits" people and is immoral,etc blah blah blah from the Left and cries that business must pay its "fair share" when it is already paying more than its fair share. We get no thanks OR civility. Only griping from special interest groups in Oly who wouldn't know the first thing what it's like to write 4-figure checks every quarter to the leeches in Olympia who King 5 showed aren't interested in investigating waste and fraud found by the media (think Paula Hammond, for one). Then find that the rates for your 10s of thousands of B&O tax got raised not four, not five or even 7% ---BUT A WHOPPING 20% starting last month, thanks to the looting democrats in Olympia who didn't see any problem with it, never mind that most of them weren't likely subject to such punishment.
Try it, sometime. Then come and talk to us about your , ahem, "generosity"......
Posted by: Michele on August 25, 2010 01:52 AMPlease quit blaming Howard Jarvis or the little people.
Posted by: yaddacubed on August 25, 2010 09:09 AMHeck, all the taxes the could levy on farm goods and auto fuels being shipped "out of state" to Seattle would probably more than pay for their government.
Re-arranging the tax laws in "their" state would also allow them to change the economic climate to be more friendly to their base of businesses than the current "Boeing friendly - all others F off" business climate fostered by the dems west of the mountains.
Eastern Washington collects tax dollars from Western Washington because the entire state - from tax incentives to zoning laws - is set up to feed businesses into Seattle. The whole of eastern washington would adjust nicely without their egos or their tax dollars.
Posted by: johnny on August 25, 2010 09:36 AMThis bilge from the same imbecile that believed on another recent thread that foreign nationals actually have a right to be here in this country and be afforded all of the rights of US citizens without any consideration of the long term effects to this country's economics. I've never heard such stupidity aired in public since the short lived, yet failed experiment known as "air america"....congrats Tensor!
Posted by: Rick D. on August 25, 2010 09:29 PMAn Obamabot rambling on about 'Obama derangement syndrome'? That's rich. 2010 and 2012 will be a wake up call for sane Democrats (if there is such an animal alive in the DNC- Reference Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller for the last remaining species known in the US)
Seattle having an epiphany in my lifetime is not likely. You need an intelligent, free thinking population to understand that the current course of action isn't working...and Seattlites apparently aren't up to this mental challenge. Meanwhile, I just enjoy watching the ensuing carnage from Snohomish County.
