Seattle's head tax has received a lot of attention. Most comments that I have seen have been highly critical. Some have felt that the tax is justified. Personally, I could be considered to be a skeptic of Seattle's council and their approach to addressing homelessness. That is, of course, assuming that the purpose of the tax was indeed meant to address homelessness.
Some interesting concerns were raised among those questioning the tax. Among them was that there were no assurances that the tax money would indeed go to addressing homelessness. Because of these concerns, I did something that very few people did. I went to Seattle's website and read the bill. To help you out, I will do something else out of the ordinary. I will provide a link to the document. Even the media covering the proposal and vote haven't thought to share the contents.
What I found was that "homeless" and "homelessness" were mentioned 14 times in explaining the purpose of the tax. When it comes to the law as it will appear in the municipal code, these words don't make a single appearance. This new law ultimately has nothing to do with homelessness, although I believe an amendment suggests that homelessness is taken into consideration when determining if the tax will remain in place in 2024 (I found the amendment after starting this post).
The true purpose of Seattle's head tax is to increase tax revenue. The discussion of homelessness was how they justified the tax. While it is technically true that Seattle pushed another resolution to establish spending on homelessness based on the revenue that the head tax is expected to produce, this is separate from the tax.
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