Weeks ago the Seattle City Council approved the so-called “head tax”, a tax that would have charged companies about $275 per full-time worker each year to fund affordable housing and homeless services. It targeted nearly 600 businesses making at least $20 million in gross revenue and would have taken effect next year.
In Seattle, a 4% rise in homelessness in the past year as rents have risen has been the flash-point for these issues. A tally of the homeless conducted in January by the All Home coalition found 8,599 people living in the streets, in vehicles, in abandoned buildings or in tents in the city.
The Seattle city council is feeling a real sense of urgency as it relates to homelessness,” said Jeffrey Shulman, a marketing professor at the University of Washington who studies growth in Seattle. “We’ve got people dying on the streets, it’s a visible crisis affecting everyone, not just those in need.”
That helped lead to the May 14 vote by the council that unanimously passed a measure requiring companies with revenues of more than $20 million a year pay an annual $275 tax per employee. The vote came after weeks of hearings, demonstrations, heated public meetings and a threat by Amazon to stop construction of its newest Seattle tower and to pull out of leasing another.
Now, the Seattle City Council has voted 7-2 to repeal the tax measure. The decision arrived after Amazon, the city’s largest employer, and other big businesses like Starbucks raised $200,000 to gather signatures for a referendum challenging the new policy.
Councilmember Lisa Herbold said she had seen polls indicating that the “vast majority” of Seattleites would support repealing the tax.
“We don’t have the time or the resources to change enough minds before the referendum in November,” Herbold said after more than an hour of often-heated public comment. “It’s not a winnable battle.”
For now, additional assistance for housing will have to come through other means as Amazon and Starbucks have killed any chance of this tax vehicle being used.
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Additional sources:
finance.yahoo.com/…
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thehill.com/…
www.usatoday.com/...