City Council Hikes Seattle's Sales Tax, Already The Highest In The Country

Seattle boasts the highest sales tax in the country — 10.5% — and it's about to get even higher thanks to a recent vote by the Seattle City Council. And don’t be softened by all the hemming and hawing, all the apologies for the regressive nature of the tax, all the empty acknowledgment of how this will disproportionately burden working people — they didn’t have to do this and they chose to anyway. 

In his recent budget proposal, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed taking advantage of the City’s new authority to pass a 0.1% sales tax increase to pay for “public safety” without taking the issue to the voters. For the uninitiated, sales taxes are about as regressive of a tax as possible, meaning it eats up a disproportionate amount of the lowest income earner's paycheck. That's because working-class people spend a greater portion of their income than rich people. King County Council just did the same thing and all of them should lose progressive credibility for it btw! 

Harrell’s proposed sales tax hike will generate about $40 million, according to a slideshow prepared by the Mayor’s Office. While the council will have the chance to hammer out an exact spending plan during the ongoing budget negotiations, Harrell suggested that most of that money go toward CARE, the City’s dual response program. His spending plan also aligns with Council President Sara Nelson’s resolution to allocate a large portion of this funding to treatment for people living with substance abuse disorder. 

“...this isn’t about raising taxes on working families,” Nelson said, denying reality. “This is about using public safety dollars for public safety.” 

The council could go on for hours and hours about how great of a cause the tax will support, but, as I’ve said on The Burner podcast, the City could be funding heart transplants for underprivileged children and they still shouldn’t raise the money by nickel and diming working people. 

Budget Chair Dan Strauss grumbled some excuses from the dais about how the State doesn’t give the City Council many options for raising additional revenue.

“I wish we had other options such as, you know —” Strauss stopped himself before he could accidentally support taxing the rich when a donor could be streaming  the Seattle Channel. 

The City’s ability to raise new funds is limited by state law, but still the City has other, progressive options. And it's not like they are unaware of that. At the end of 2022, Harrell and then-Council Member Teresa Mosqueda convened a taskforce to study new progressive revenue options in hopes to implement something to save the budget by 2025. That taskforce, at times derailed by the tantrums of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, released a list of nine progressive options and the council picked three that they liked, but never actually acted on them. If they wanted to fund their priorities without burdening working people, they would! 

Surprisingly, the only council member who voted no was Council Member Maritza Rivera. I would make a fan edit Tik Tok of her standing on absolute business on the dais about this proposal “tax[ing] poor people to help poor people,” but she’s only a friend for this one fight. Don’t expect her to advocate for taxing the rich — Rivera said that the council should instead trim some fat from the budget before increasing the sales tax. 

And I’m glad she said that! The $40 million this tax will raise is about equal to the bump that the Seattle Police Department will get this year, the largest increase any department will see. Rivera would certainly disagree with me here, but put those piggies on a diet before you come begging for more of my money. 

But perhaps most surprisingly of all, this proposal got the stamp of approval from progressive revenue empress-God-queen Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rinck. She echoed her colleagues' disappointment in the proposal's regressive nature, called for Olympia to give City’s better options, and then cast her vote of betrayal. 

Rinck said she sincerely hopes this will be the last sales tax increase the City ever passes. But after this vote, it would be foolish to believe anyone on the council will fight to ensure that.