As layoffs mount, office towers sit half-empty, and high earners increasingly look for the exits, Socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is signaling she may pursue even more taxes on large businesses and wealthy residents.
Speaking at a community forum Friday night, Wilson said her administration is exploring new “progressive revenue options” to help close a projected $140 million city budget gap in 2027.
“My team is very hard at work looking for progressive revenue options, taxing the rich, taxing big business in a way that we think will be politically viable and practical,” Wilson said.
According to the Center Square, Wilson did not provide specifics at the event, but during her mayoral campaign she proposed expanding Seattle’s JumpStart payroll tax and creating a local capital gains tax to raise additional revenue from top earners.
Wilson also appeared to acknowledge the central contradiction facing City Hall.
“So I think companies can afford to pay more, but it’s not good to give them an incentive to go over to Bellevue,” she said.
What she did not explain is how Seattle plans to keep jobs in the city while increasing the tax burden on the companies that provide them.
That question is not theoretical. Downtown Seattle Association President and CEO Jon Scholes said earlier this month that Amazon has already shifted thousands of employees from Seattle to Bellevue and other King County cities in response to Seattle’s increasingly aggressive tax structure. Though Amazon still has around 50,000 workers tied to Seattle, at least 15,000 now work in Bellevue, many moved after the JumpStart tax took effect in 2021.
Scholes said Seattle’s downtown office vacancy rate now exceeds 33%, a sign of how deeply the city’s business core has weakened.
Seattle’s tax burden is already layered. The JumpStart tax charges businesses up to 2.4% on each employee earning more than $150,000. The city also levies a Business and Occupation tax, while beginning in 2026 businesses with employees making more than $1 million will face an additional 5% tax on salaries above that level to fund housing programs.
Now Wilson is considering adding more on top.
The timing is notable. Oracle this week laid off 491 Seattle-area workers, while Meta is cutting another 168 Washington employees after earlier rounds this year. Microsoft and Amazon have also shed thousands of jobs, contributing to more than 20,000 tech layoffs in the region. It was also revealed that Starbucks is moving its headquarters to Nashville. At the same time, Washington Democrats have enacted a new 9.9% state income tax on earnings above $1 million, a move critics say will accelerate the outflow of capital, talent, and investment.
That concern has already shaped state policy elsewhere. Gov. Bob Ferguson recently signed legislation reducing Washington’s estate tax from 35% to 20%, with a $3 million exemption, after lawmakers acknowledged concerns that wealthy residents were leaving the state. The rollback came just after the Legislature had previously raised the estate tax, underscoring the tension between raising revenue and keeping taxpayers in place.
Wilson told the crowd Friday she is also trying to rein in spending. She said each city department has been instructed to prepare scenarios for 5% and 10% budget cuts in response to the looming deficit.
Still, the mayor’s emphasis remained on raising new revenue from large employers and wealthy residents — even as Seattle and Washington more broadly face visible signs of corporate pullback and wealth migration.
A recent survey found 44% of Washington business leaders are considering moving their personal residence out of state, with taxes cited as the top concern. High-profile departures, including Howard Schultz’s move to Florida, have only amplified fears of a broader exodus.
