Amazon's halting of building a tower in Seattle amid a potential "$75 million-a-year tax on large companies" for homelessness services has fed growing public opposition to a plan which taxes business to spend $50 million of the funds raised to build affordable housing, $20 million on the homeless, and $5 million on administrative costs, The Seattle Times reported.
A Seattle City Council meeting to discuss the tax on big businesses in the city, of which Amazon is the largest, raised the dander last Wednesday of those decrying government taxation, spending, and the crippling of large employers in a city that has been seen its homeless population double since 2014 amid a boom in business, according to a report.
"We are unable to keep up with the need that is being created by this really hot competition for housing," council member Lisa Herbold, one of four sponsoring the tax, told the Times, admitting she expected a "fierce debate."
Opponents to the tax at Wednesday's town hall heckled the council with chants of "no head tax," turned their backs on speakers supporting the funding for the homeless crisis, rebuked financial irresponsibility of city government, blamed the city's policies for rising crime, and claimed taxes on business will lead to a reduction in jobs and an increase in homelessness, according to the report.
"They're hearing the whole story now," executive director of the Sodo Business Improvement Alliance Erin Goodman told the Times. "They have been listening to a very small subset for a long time and have not been listening to their actual constituents."
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan expressed concern about Amazon's opposition to the tax, but refused to commit to vetoing the tax if it were to pass May 14, reportedly adding a "cooler conversation" on the tax needs to take place.
"Certain segments of labor are very strongly against the head tax – the building trades, for example," Durkan told the Times. "When Amazon pauses their construction of a building, it's lots of jobs. It's lots of sales tax that they pay on every piece of everything they buy, and our general-fund revenues are very heavily dependent on construction right now."
". . . The only way we get there is we actually quit some of the hyperbole, quit only the heated rhetoric and bring people together and say, 'What are those mutual goals and aspirations we have and how do we move toward them?'"
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