
Seattle City Council passes JumpStart tax on high salaries paid by big business - remarkEon
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-city-council-passes-new-jumpstart-tax-on-high-salaries-paid-by-big-businesses/
======
loeg
This is sort of a municipal income tax with a zero percent bracket up to $150k
(per individual); the analogy breaks down in that spousal income isn't
considered at all, and the tax rate on employee income is scaled by +0-0.7%
depending on the size of the business' payroll, which is a bit odd. This
complicated machination is likely intended to work around Washington state
law, which forbids income taxes broadly.

Smaller businesses (under $7m payroll) are exempted. Additionally, some
employers of highly compensated workers (i.e., Doctors) are exempted.

The brackets are:

$7-100 million payroll: 0.7% $150-400k; 1.7% 400k+.

$100-$1 billion payroll: 0.7% $150-400k; 1.9% 400k+.

And >$1 billion payroll: 1.4% $150-400k, 2.4% 400k+. (That's got to be
targeted at just Amazon, I think? 5000 heads x $200k gets you to $1B, and 5k
is like half the SWEs in Seattle.)

I don't yet know if those brackets are set to track inflation at all. It's
unclear to me if a company could simply form a bunch of subsidiary LLCs to pay
smaller lots of employees to get a lower tax rate.

