WA: Tacoma Gun & Ammunition Tax Passes City Council Unanimously

[mountaineer]

Ammoland reports:

Tacoma Gun & Ammunition Tax Passes City Council Unanimously
 Posted on November 15, 2019 by Dean Weingarten   


On 12 November 2019, the Tacoma City Council passed its controversial tax on guns and ammunition. The tax is based on a similar tax in Seattle.  The vote was unanimous, 8-0. 112 people were reported to have spoken on the issue.

To an ordinary reader, the tax would seem to violate the Washington State preemption law. The Washington Supreme Court held differently in 2017. It voted that a tax was not a regulation. One judge dissented, writing it was obvious the tax was aimed specifically at firearms.  ...

...   Tacoma has much more to lose than Seattle. Seattle's two dedicated gun shops moved to the suburbs. Seattle lost some tax revenue. Seattle gun owners were inconvenienced.

Tacoma has a couple of guns shops. They will likely move. It is also home to Aero Precision, a successful and growing firearms manufacturer. Aero Precision is home to about 400 jobs, according to Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Aero Precision was awarded the large manufacturing firm Gold Award for Washington State in 2017.  ... Full story at Ammoland

[PeteS in CA]

The $25 per firearm is pretty nominal except at the low end. I'm speaking only $$, not approving or saying it should be ignored. The $0.02 per cartridge under .22 and $0.05 per cartridge is much more of a bite. For .22 LR, the online price for a box of 100 seems to be around $3-$4, and the tax would be $2. A 50%-67% "tax" is a much more significant bite and might be deemed to significantly burden users' rights. $5 per hundred would probably be significant for popular larger calibers like .223/5.56, .38 Special, .38 ACP, 9 mm, and .45 ACP.

[Elderberry]

A History of Washington State's Tax Code

https://allinforwa.org/article/history-washington-states-tax-code

Washington’s state and local tax code is the most regressive in the nation – households with the lowest incomes pay taxes as a share of their income at a rate seven times higher than the richest households. That’s completely upside down.

With the right investments, we could lead the nation in education, healthcare, and overall quality of life. But our upside down tax code holds our state back from having the resources necessary to invest in these foundations that make our state thrive.

How did Washington get itself into this situation? For starters, powerful special interests have manipulated our tax code for decades and left our cities and state with less to invest in our people and communities.---

Today – Washington’s tax system is the most upside-down and regressive in the county. Residents with the lowest incomes pay seven times more in state and local taxes as a share of their income than the richest 1 percent of Washingtonians.

[PeteS in CA]

A History of Washington State's Tax Code

https://allinforwa.org/article/history-washington-states-tax-code

So people making $103K and under pay 47.1% (if my mental Math is correct) of state and local taxes (hmmmmm, including sales and gas taxes?). If I read the chart on page 15 of this report, https://www.ofm.wa.gov/sites/default/files/public/legacy/reports/income_wealth_report.pdf , in 2009 less than 20% of households' incomes were above $100K. Allowing for inflation, that means that ~20% of Washingtonians pay ~53% of Washington state and local taxes. IOW, "rich" Washingtonians pay ~2.65X their share of taxes.

[Elderberry]

The percentages on that chart aren't % of total taxes paid. They are % of a person's total income that was used to pay taxes.

[PeteS in CA]

The percentages on that chart aren't % of total taxes paid. They are % of a person's total income that was used to pay taxes.

Ah, my misread. The state's main taxes seem to be sales and gas taxes, which tend to have a somewhat similar $ bite. Having a state income tax would change the % bite, though CA, NY and a few other states demonstrate that an income taxis likely to morph into a screw-the-rich mechanism, which just drives productive people/businesses out of the state with the jobs they created.