‘We’ve made ourselves an outlier’: Downtown Seattle Association says business taxes are pushing out employers
Mar 16, 2026, 5:00 AM | Updated: 3:39 pm
Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, called for fewer taxes on businesses in the city, saying in a recent speech, “We don’t need more business taxes in Seattle. We need more businesses in Seattle paying taxes.”
He told “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio that while the idea seems straightforward, lawmakers haven’t responded that way.
“We’ve got plenty of space for more businesses to be in Seattle, paying taxes. What’s been unfortunate over these last couple of years is there’s a billion dollars of new employer taxes that our city government has imposed on folks doing business in our city,” Scholes said.
Consequently, taxes are pushing out employers, hurting job growth, and leading to a higher vacancy rate.
“[Taxes have] contributed to jobs leaving our city and job growth on the other side of the lake, and that’s contributing to a significant office vacancy rate, collapsing commercial office values in downtown Seattle, which is then shifting the property tax burden to residents and to small businesses through their leases,” Scholes explained. “So this is something we have to reckon with as a city.”
Scholes argued Seattle’s tax structure has put the city at a competitive disadvantage compared to neighboring cities like Bellevue.
“We’ve made ourselves an outlier when it comes to where you may want to locate jobs as an employer in this region, given the different tax structures,” Scholes said. “These are taxes you’re not paying in Bellevue and other parts of the region, and it’s having an effect on where those jobs are located. So I think the attitude of city government over the years is ‘We need a lot of business taxes to raise a bunch of money and make more investments, etc,’ but it’s driving businesses out. We need more businesses paying those taxes. That’s how we strengthen and grow the job space.”
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
