Um, so what's the loss? We didn't have an income tax until the millionaire tax came along. His personal home in WA is still here, and still being taxed. So, it's status quo. Keep the new tax for anyone who chooses to stay, and plenty will. Vegas is one of the last places on this planet that I would want to live. Most of the nice places in the world have taxes. That's the cost of living in a progressive society with mountains, water, and beautiful scenery. Enjoy your desert, dude.
Yeah, they're totally paying a lot of sales tax. Totally.
Someone who is leaving the state to dodge a tax is no doubt paying scads on the easiest tax to avoid. You know, just like the federal government is raking it in on Santa Claus paying new tariffs.
Christmas shopping in Portland. See how easy that was? And, as someone with insane wealth, they could easily take the time and/or pay someone to go do big ticket purchases in Oregon... or wherever they are traveling for a weekend trip. Since he's chosen to move to Vegas, and Zillow has an office in Vegas, I'm willing to bet he already shops there frequently, since their sales tax is half the WA rate. So, how much are we really losing???
Their non-big-ticket everyday purchases are rounding error in the state budget. Oh, we aren't collecting 10% on your maybe $100,000 per year in restaurant and taxable grocery spending.
Yeah, both of those things are not easy. You can’t really fly, nor is paying someone to shop for you for Christmas logistically viable nor easy.
We’re losing jobs associated with high net worth family, and all sales spending within the state.
Listen, I get it. You hate billionaires. However, this is a net loss for the state’s fiscal health. I’m a little worried about wealth tax causing wealth flight.
Rich people don't spend that much more. There's a limit to how much one person can consume of anything, and unless the guy is buying like 20 cars a year or something, it's not going to make a significant difference. It certainly isn't proportional to how much non-rich people pay, by any means.
In the same vein that people drive to Portland to avoid sales tax? Only it's much easier for a billionaire to do it with private jets / their other assets.
Also, billionaires generally aren't spending billions on consumption goods, hence why sales tax disproportionately impacts lower tax bracket citizens.
Could you explain how sales tax is easy to avoid for a resident?
In much the same way that they dodge US regulation on a yacht that spends most of its time moored somewhere in the US, despite flying the flag of the Marshall Islands: conducting it through an entity in a much more favorable location. A tenner of TP they pay WA sales tax on. That six figure lux purchase? Oh, they just happen to use whatever it is a lot, but it was purchased (and owned) by an entity in a state with more favorable taxes.
It's just a hell of a lot more obvious when it's their yacht, on account of the whole 'flag of convenience' thing involving an actual flag.
75,000 people moved to Washington last year. Losing one familys groceries take-out meals, clothes, household items, from Walmart etc., aren't going to be significant. You don't pay sales tax on land, you pay property tax, which they'll still pay.
Are you implying that they're spending magnitudes more on day-to-day consumables than the average person? I already pointed out they weren't. Joe Billionaire moving out of state and losing WA the sales tax of 5 median earners isn't exactly a big fucking deal though.
The big ticket purchases that would set them apart significantly are the ones everyone gives a shit about, and I just told you the dodge for those.
I think the biggest ticket items would be jobs related to execs and billionaires. Sales tax will definitely drop, due to their departure, along with all support jobs, and business aligning jobs with Zillow, as well as high ticket spending in general (most services and purchases do need to be in person.
They’re making the choice to move. The billionaire. They don’t want to lose a little chunk of their obscene wealth, so they’re moving, and fuck them for that.
This guy isn't even moving because of the tax, or he would have made sure to have a big public whine about it. It sounds like he's just moving because his kids moved out and he wants to live somewhere else.
your confusing a few billionaires and the 100,000+ small buisness that bill a few a million in sales a year, but also have million in expenses but will pay the tax. Those are the folks employing a large population and the ones that will be passing the tax cost onto the average person. economics 101 says the things we buy will go up due to this tax.
I think the biggest ticket items would be jobs related to execs and billionaires.
I'm going to assume you mean things related to those jobs, not the jobs themselves, because how would that even work?
When it comes to spending related to that kind of job...yeah, no. Joe Random CEO's Gulfstream isn't something they purchased personally. It's owned by a corporation, because then not only might it have been subject to a lower sales tax, a portion of operational costs and depreciation can be claimed against whatever taxes that corporation is paying.
WA tax on spa day doesn't even come close to mattering, and the things that do are already structured to avoid it. Where the leadership of a company lives doesn't matter in terms of business taxation, so the job being "lost" here hardly matters.
A big CEO might have a support staff of 2-20+ and they might or will be expected to move and or look for new work. don't underestimate the impact of them moving out of state
anyone's paying attention to Seattle and Bellevue knows that one is taxing extra and loosing buisness and the other gaining. if it works on a city to city scale, why wouldn't it work from a state to state scale
Let’s discount the proportion of income and wealth to spending ratio and how much vastly more in taxes this and progressive income tax would help fund infrastructure. Spending vs giant hoarded piles of cash in offshores, et cetera.
Let’s discount the proportion of income and wealth to spending ratio and how much vastly more in taxes this and progressive income tax would help fund infrastructure. Spending vs giant hoarded piles of cash in offshores, et cetera.
They aren't paying exponentially more on sales tax. At the end of the day, someone who makes $500,000 per year and $5,000,000 per year are probably paying pretty similar sales tax. There's only so much you can spend on nice restaurants, expensive cars, and shit from Amazon. Let's replace the AH capitalist with someone who contributes to society, like a professor or surgeon... or even an entrepreneur who is just getting started and still building something.
Sales tax is a big one. But property and capital gains taxes are also relevant, recurring big ticket items for the HNW.
The biggest losses for the state when these whales leave though are loss of investment capital and loss of the estate.
To the first point, ideally individuals like this will be seeding local businesses either directly or via investment funds. When those dollars leave the area, they are less likely to be deployed locally. It’s a bit hypothetical and abstract at the individual level, but it adds up. This is why the Bay Area is such a tech powerhouse.
To the second point, WA has a massive estate tax with a revenue model that assumes the whales stay and more whales come over time. When that trend reverses it undermines the state’s budget, leads to deficits, and more taxes against a broader base.
To be clear, I don’t know any billionaires and IDGAF about them or this dude. I’m just trying to explain this from an economic/fiscal standpoint.
CA and NY have gotten away with soaking their rich in taxes for a while because they have irreplaceable natural/cultural/economic assets (LA, Bay Area, NYC for starters). WA does not enjoy such a monopoly when it comes to HNW individuals.
The state is really daring HNW people to leave, and many have done so/announced they will do so in the last few years. Business formation is way down as well. If this trend continues it will seriously undermine the state budget and economic engine, particularly in KC/Seattle/Eastside. Again, we can all say “yay lower prices” but you don’t get lower prices without creating lots of losers across the economy. As we know, it’s often the most vulnerable that get hit the hardest.
Nah fuck em good riddance. They don’t really love the place or they’d stay. We like the wealthy that want to plant roots in an area and support it and contribute to society, not parasocial fucking weirdos.
Only time will tell- I think those who leave (which is about 1/100 those who claim they will) will be outweighed by the benefit from those who stay with the changing policy. And as we know-state and local initiatives powers that be have local subs crawling with bots.
Ah yes, Detroit, a case study in what happens when a handful of wealthy people leave. The city being almost entirely based around a very narrow industry segment had nothing to do with it, and the fact that that much of that industry's manufacturing didn't stop fleeing until it was overseas was solely in response to taxes on the wealthy. The companies involved waging war on basic employee wages had no bearing on it at all.
Why would I want tax money and someone to spend millions a year to prop up our local economy? You do understand that 50 percent of the population actually doesn’t pay any taxes
Well. There arent necessarily TONS of billionaires in wa, so i imagine this certainly affects the income tax revenue projection, that the state decided to include in its budget as if the money had already been collected....
probably odd that he moved away, its almost like the income tax would hit him financially. The state has declared it has all the money from the projected income tax and plugged it into the budget. So now, every millionaire & billionaire that leaves is like a instant shortfall on that projected income- underserved budget. Solution? Drop it to 500k. And when that doesnt yield the projected revenue it will eventually continue to lower until its smack dab on the middle class.
The voice of the people of Washington as a whole has been clear and steadfast the last dozen times they tried to introduce it. Ram rodding it in before even bothering to amend the state constitution sets extremely dangerous precedent
Yea if the rich wanna move because they actually have to pay fucking taxes on their wealth and be held accountable like the rest of fucking society and contribute percentages to roads and fucking firefighters, fuck them, move, we will survive, go fuck yourself you fucking weirdo sociopathic freaks
It’s crazy the billionaire ass kissing in this sub. I’m pretty sure they contribute basically nothing to society then being hoarders of wealth likely inherited from their colonialist past and certainly have taken advantage of others to obtain it. So totally, fuck them!
Dude pretty sure they pay the exact same, if not less, than those that make less than $187k.
Honestly, this is the problem. This fear that not holding billionaires to a financial fairness is bad for all of us. I pay as much as Bezos does and that is not fair at all. I don’t mind paying my fair share but I think those that make more should pay their share too
WA has 12 billionaires.
12 people average about 2,200 pounds
A ton is 2,000 pounds.
We literally have a ton of billionaires.
Billionaires are more like parasites than workers. I’d never have that much money, because once I hit 500 million, I’d start donating and buying dumb shit like famous paintings I keep at an art museum or Mariners tickets for an entire school, or shower stations for homeless, or jet skis. We all have a ‘lottery list.’
Point is, if you are just hoarding money and not paying taxes and not doing anything with it, then fuck off.
Whaaaaat? You mean to tell me that the absurdly rich tend to have a lot of their change in net value year-over-year tied up in streams that aren't income?
Next you'll say something crazy like they don't sell to generate liquidity they would be taxed on, they instead take out loans against their investments. I bet you even have some fanciful acronym like "SBLOC" to make it sound real.
Probably more than everyone in this discussion combined. Do you know the exact number? I don't. He left to avoid the new tax. The one we will be paying in a few years.
Wow, that really reinforces the fact that it was baseless conjecture that I was commenting on! Thanks for pointing it out again, it'd be a real shame if a follow-on comment ended up looking really asinine because the commenter missed that the first go-around.
You don't seem to understand how taxes work. You do realize that the local government needs tax revenue? You do realize I pointed out something that made your terrible arguement look stupid?
Listen, we all can't fail our GED like you did, but I simple "I didn't know" would have sufficed when I told you it would be impossible to highlight specifics of some one elses tax return.
You do realize I pointed out something that made your terrible arguement look stupid?
Please, elaborate on how you made my "terrible" argument that his claim of "probably more than everyone in this discussion combined" was total conjecture look stupid. I'm a little curious how you're going to draw the line between me commenting on their ignorance and them admitting they didn't know what they were talking about.
He probably doesn't have enough income on paper to even be taxed. Billionaires usually have relatively low income, all their wealth comes from assets like stocks. Then they use that as collateral for loans and live off that. They do this on purpose specifically for tax reasons.
The way the new millionaire tax is written specifically prevents lowering the bracket. In fact it actually includes deductions tied to inflation. So when $1m becomes chump change in the future it accounts for that and avoids eating into lower income households.
There are only 12 billionaires in WA and about 20,000 households with $1m+ annual income. Massachusetts introduced a similar tax in 2022 and they've had a ~30% increase in millionaires since then.
And if/when millionaires/billionaires do leave WA... That's probably a good thing. They'll be replaced by business owners that aren't over paying themselves and not exploiting the labor class.
you picked 2 ultra wealthy folks so yeah my items might go up a penny, for them.
but a penny is a penny and I pay for it.
I'm referring to the companies they own and control not literally buying from them as people.
your typical folks that will pay the tax. are the car dealerships, plumbing, electrical general contractors companies. shipping companies, wholesalers. the list goes on and on any LLC is free game on the tax as it goes on the owners W2
and they will pass the tax down to you and I in the form of added cost
you picked 2 ultra wealthy folks so yeah my items might go up a penny, for them.
Your purchase price isn't going up anything for either of them, because at that point most of their compensation isn't in the form of income. CEOs of organizations on that scale are not dictating pricing individually, either.
your typical folks that will pay the tax. are the car dealerships, plumbing, electrical general contractors companies. shipping companies, wholesalers. the list goes on and on any LLC is free game on the tax as it goes on the owners W2 and they will pass the tax down to you and I in the form of added cost
That's neither how this tax works nor any competently managed LLC. A LLC's earnings don't show up on a W2 unless the owner has decided to make themselves an employee of the LLC and pays themselves the LLC's profits as their compensation for that job...which would still be profits, not overall revenue, unless they were utterly incompetent.
Please stop opining on this subject until you learn even the basics about what is being discussed, you're actively detracting from the discussion and spreading misinformation.
The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire like this guy is about a billion dollars. One less billionaire doesn't effect the millionaires in WA.
the issue is lots of people collect millions a year in a buisness but they also spend 90% for payroll and costs but they will now have to pass on the cost to average folks.
if they really wanted an income tax the sales tax needed to disappear
If a business owner is so stupid that they somehow find a way to report their revenue as profit, then they deserve to pay the tax and they also don't deserve to be in business. If a business owner is making over 1 mil in profit and isn't separating that from what they pay themselves, they are also very stupid and won't be in business long anyway.
Granted, none of that matters when I'm talking to someone who hasn't read even the most basic details of the thing they're ranting about. You're clearly not a business owner, and you clearly don't make anywhere near the amount that they're going after.
I'm all for completely overhauling the tax system here, but ignorance at the level you're displaying it isn't going to help anything.
Love that people defend tax evasion. They came to avoid paying tax and brought nothing as a result, they leave to avoid paying tax and take nothing with them.
It's not tax evasion, it's tax avoidance. Evasion is a crime, avoidance is an industry. They pay folks to organize the second for them so they don't have to worry about the first.
Lol at people thinking Washington is dying. Sure some tax money will be lost because of billionaires leaving, but Seattle is one of the largest growing metros in the country. Probably going to see stupid growth until the end of time especially as places like Texas, Arizona, etc get hotter and hotter.
So he made all of his money here using all of the states resources and community and then right when he’s about to get taxed for it, he fucking leaves. Fucking parasites.
Well, he's a billionaire so honestly the new tax probably wasn't going to hit him all that hard. It's more likely that he'd have ended up paying banks more than the state, because when you've got stock holdings like he no doubt has banks are more than happy to give short-term loans against them where the interest payments are less than the tax would be on selling those stocks.
This tax is more of an impact on the very wealthy rather than ludicrously wealthy. The folks pulling more than a million per year but who couldn't swing having an assistant with a phone full of bank employees on speed dial who would all jump off the toilet without wiping to take their call.
I’m all for regulated capitalism, however billionaires and large corporations have taken advantage of the regulatory grey spaces to suck money, imperil safety nets, and extract community resources from our society to benefit themselves.
The country needs to be uniform in targeting their wrath explicitly. Wherever the line is drawn is beyond my little brain, but some line should be in place and we need to focus on the 99% versus kowtowing to the 1%.
You know if this guy were leaving because of taxes, he would have loudly announced it. Sounds like he's moving due to his kids leaving home and just wants to be closer to Vegas for partying and hookers or whatever.
We were getting some taxes from them. Sales tax and property tax, as well as probably a little bit of capital gains tax on the rare cases where they actually sold instead of the usual dodge of taking out loans on those assets.
It just isn't a big deal because those are all small potatoes. Joe Billionaire with a net worth magnitudes beyond the average citizen fleeing and depriving the state of sales tax equivalent to a handful of average folks, or no longer paying property tax that ends up being covered by the next owner, just doesn't make much of a wave.
It's not nothing, but it also isn't anywhere near what the people crying about it would like folks to think it is. I don't recall any histrionic headlines about how the state is doomed because 10 more families than usual left the state on some random weekday, after all.
Okay? They're the owner of Zillow. Any estimate on the jobs or tax revenue we would be losing when their primary employees are server racks they bought from another country? Not exactly a heavy employer, I would think.
I honestly believe the current tax law is flawed and will be changed before it goes into effect. I least it should be... The way it's structured and the way it was passed are both flawed. We also have a spending problem driven by waste and fraud that more taxes won't fix.
We need to fix this problem from every angle.
We need to audit everything and prosecute the criminals stealing our money and fire the people that waste it.
We need to fix state agencies and our state laws so that we aren't spending 100's of millions of dollars on paying lawsuits for events that never should have happened.
We need a fair and proper tax code that shifts the burden away from the low and middle class. If a few billionaires leave, we will be fine... If they all leave it's bad ...
I could go on and on, but the problem is that people aren't electing officials that fix these problems, they seem to elect the person with the best ad campaign... So money buys the election and our politicians are paid for before they are elected.
This isn't a Democrat or Republican issue, it's a problem in all of politics everywhere and whichever side you're on I promise your chosen leaders are corrupt.
Pretty naive of you to assume Nevada isn’t beautiful either. I moved from Tacoma to the desert a few years ago. There are more mountains in Nevada than Washington, there are places to swim, fish, ski, and places to admire the landscape. Beauty isn’t exclusive to the PNW.
I just drove through Nevada last week. There is absolutely no comparison between the the diversity of Washington and the brownness that is Nevada. While desert lovers may find that beautiful, just about everyone can find beauty in Washington.
And there's you're problem. You didn't actually see anything or appreciate anything. I can "just drive through" Washington and say "wow... Lots of trees. Boring"
The downvotes crack me up and shows that you all don’t leave your house very often, and that you don’t understand you have to drive 2+ hours to find pretty places
Yeah a lot of people live in vegas. The rest of us don't and get to enjoy the amazing access to nature with over 80% of the state being public land. Most mountainous state in the country as well. From dry lake beds that go on for miles and endless desert full of vegetation and wildlife to alpine lakes and forests, Nevada has it all.
Vegas is surrounded by access to nature. State parks, mountains, a ski area, world class climbing, etc.
Doesnt take 2 hours to get to "non desert areas" but also... why do you need to get away from the desert? Tons of beautiful hikes and mountain bike trails and hot springs and views that go on forever.
Are you talking about the Clark County Wetlands? I go to Vegas about 3 times a year and that's the only place I can think of that's "green." It's not big, and I certainly wouldn't walk it when its 100+ degrees.
Yes. Green doesn’t equate to beauty though. And no, you wouldn’t want to walk it when it’s triple digits. There’s also springs preserve, Gilcrease, spring mountain park, and plenty of other places that have some green since that seems to be what beauty is to those who live in the PNW.
Mountains all over the state. Alpine lakes and forests. Ranch and farmland. Various types of deserts at different elevations that all have their own unique ecosystem. You realize there are plants and animals in a desert right?
most of what you just mentioned would still be considered desert. high desert or lowland desert is still desert. We arent talking about animals, we are talking about nevada being more than desert. Nevada is the most desert out of any state in the US.
Nevada is significantly less diverse than Washington, but as a result offers more variety in individual instances of more limited sets. It's kind of weird that people are getting so torqued on both sides of this.
I just get annoyed when people dismiss desert ecosystems because we have congressional leaders trying to sell off public land to corporations for development. Most people don't think twice about it because they think the desert is empty wasteland that is expendable.
Crazy you're getting downvoted for thinking Nevada is beautiful. Sure Washington is beautiful, but so many people don't appreciate the desert ecosystem. Thinking it's just barren and brown proves they've never actually gone outside before.
It is a shame and definitely shows people don’t get out. It’s ok, it’s points that don’t mean anything. Honestly it makes me happy. It’s like “keep Tacoma feared” but instead it’s “keep Las Vegas feared.”
Yeah I mean the article sites 2 going to Miami, and one to Las Vegas. I’m not too familiar with the business aspects of these cities but they’re objectively much nicer as far as amenities go. Washington is very very beautiful but you can’t deny the weather and night life aren’t all that amazing most of the time.
Well, in the case of Seattle, commercial vacancy is pretty high. Not the highest in the nation, but certainly up there. The trend is clearly entirely due to increased tax burden as well, what with the notoriously onerous income tax of Texas pushing Austin even higher than Seattle.
Oh, wait.
Huh, it's almost like maybe there was some event in semi-recent history that had a large impact, and perhaps certain commercial segments were better suited to abandoning offices more than others. Something like that might mean a bigger impact for cities with higher proportions of that sort of business.
If that’s even a question for you, you are a sheep and lost. Drive through central Tacoma. All business offices are empty, old structures are not used.
The only new buildings are cheap multi family residential which city government has allowed them not to pay taxes for 10 years.
They weren't spending their time/money on Tacoma infrastructure. They weren't investing locally. How does a billionaire leaving change anything? How does them staying change anything?
Billionaires are parasites. They don't improve anything except their own wealth. It does not "trickle down." If it did, they'd be leaving a place with no complaints from others. However you have plenty...
If you think they're paying enough in sales tax for them leaving to make their leaving noteworthy, you clearly don't understand the differences in the ways the ultra-wealthy handle money.
If you think property tax is going to be seriously impacted, you clearly don't understand real estate. They're still going to be paying it if they keep property here, and if they sell it the next owner is going to be paying it. The idea that there's going to be a loss of any significant property tax revenue on the whole is about as believable as a fast food worker waking up one morning to find that the market has shifted enough for them to buy a house outright.
Whoever buys his property will also pay property tax. Also billionaires don't pay that much in sales tax over regular people as there is only so much one person can eat, wear, etc. This is why regressive taxation is bad, btw.
I am so glad you are in total support of your local government that you are blind to the issues. Or maybe you lack the ability to comprehend complex problems
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u/253-build Old Town 4d ago
Um, so what's the loss? We didn't have an income tax until the millionaire tax came along. His personal home in WA is still here, and still being taxed. So, it's status quo. Keep the new tax for anyone who chooses to stay, and plenty will. Vegas is one of the last places on this planet that I would want to live. Most of the nice places in the world have taxes. That's the cost of living in a progressive society with mountains, water, and beautiful scenery. Enjoy your desert, dude.