Yet, if Seattle’s progressive income tax is illegal, isn’t the federal progressive tax rate also illegal? Via Reason:
Seattle’s “almost certainly illegal” income tax, passed last month, is already the subject of three separate lawsuits charging that it is, well, illegal.
The latest was filed yesterday by the Freedom Foundation—a conservative think tank in Washington state—and Seattle law firm Lane Powell PC, who say the new city-level 2.25 percent levy on high income earners clearly violates state law and the state constitution.
“The first issue with it,” Freedom Foundation attorney David Dewhirst says, “is that it’s plainly illegal. I think it’s a major problem when politicians don’t feel bound by the law they know exists.”
The Seattle income tax violates a 1980 statute passed by the Washington Legislature which says, “a county, city, or city-county shall not levy a tax on net income,” Dewhirst says.