Seattle businesses footing most of the bill for city government: study

(The Middle Sq.) – A examine carried out by the Downtown Seattle Affiliation and financial marketing consultant ECONorthwest discovered that Seattle companies pay an estimated two-thirds of metropolis’s taxes.

The estimated share of taxes paid by companies grew from 56% in 2013 to 64% in 2022, in accordance with the examine. That was estimated to return in at $1.1 billion this yr. The largest motive for the rise is the JumpStart payroll expense tax that was handed by the Seattle Metropolis Council in 2020.

The tax requires companies with a minimum of $7 million in annual payroll to pay between 0.7%-2.4% on salaries and wages of Seattle workers who make a minimum of $150,000 per yr. Firms akin to Amazon, Meta and Google are topic to the tax.

“The general incidence of Metropolis taxes didn’t change considerably till 2021 and 2022, with the implementation of the payroll expense tax, which has maybe completely shifted the steadiness between enterprise and nonbusiness taxpayers,” the examine explains.

The examine additionally discovered Seattle’s taxes grew greater than 4 instances sooner than the inhabitants and employment over the previous decade. Town’s tax assortment grew 94%, as employment grew by 19% and town inhabitants grew by 22% since 2013, in accordance with the info.

The Downtown Seattle Affiliation factors out that town has grown more and more reliant on new taxes to gas new spending. A few of the new taxes stem from the Seattle Metropolis Council. These embrace the Sweetened Beverage Tax, the Brief-Time period Rental Tax and the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax, all of which had been established within the final 5 years.

The council-approved taxes totaled over $316 million in 2021 and practically $310 million in 2022. Since 2018, the taxes introduced in $700 million to town, in accordance with the examine.