The nytimes article you linked is about the 2018 head tax. There were earlier initiatives: - 2017 - Seattle approved an income tax for high incomes, but was re

The nytimes article you linked is about the 2018 head tax. There were earlier initiatives: - 2017 - Seattle approved an income tax for high incomes, but was removed six months later after a court dispute - https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-income-tax-ruled-invalid https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-inc... - earlier years - there have been Washington state income taxes proposed over the years, which have been usually shut down. googling shows the last might've been Senate Bill 6559 in 2016 - https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article101115027.html https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article... The inability to pass a city income tax or a state income tax has been part of the arguments for why a head tax was proposed in 2018 - it's not ideal, but everything else in the past has been rejected. Yanis Varoufakis (fmr greek minister of finance) gave a talk in Seattle a few months ago talking about the head tax: https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s