‘This is very performative’: Jake and Spike debate if former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz left WA over ‘millionaire tax’

Right before the Washington State Legislature passed a tax on millionaires Tuesday, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced he was leaving Seattle for Miami.

KIRO hosts Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill disagreed on whether it was a coincidence.

“Grandkids are on the East Coast, his children and their families are on the East Coast,” Spike said on “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio, citing Schultz’s LinkedIn post.

“A lot of old people retire to Florida, everybody gets it. But what are the odds that he puts this thing out right as they’re making this decision?” Jake responded.

Jake and Spike disagree on Howard Schultz’s motives for leaving WA

Jake believes Schultz’s move was motivated by the “millionaire’s tax.” Spike pushed back, saying the relocation wasn’t tax-related, but Schultz timed the announcement deliberately.

“This is very performative,” Spike said. “Schultz was going to move to Florida. They’ve already moved, and it wasn’t when the income tax was proposed. That’s not when they decided to pick up and move. They were already going. But the release of it coincides with the new tax moving through the legislature. This was orchestrated.”

“It must be related to it,” Jake countered. “Because he could have made this announcement three months from now. He could have made it a year and a half from now.”

“He’s retiring. He’s not making an income,” Spike argued. “He’s living off his retirement benefits. Those are tax-exempt from a millionaire’s income tax.”

Spike said it was worse for Washington when Starbucks announced its plans to open corporate offices in Nashville and offered relocation to Seattle employees.

“So he’s not moving because of taxes?” Jake asked.

“Not the millionaire’s tax that’s moving its way through the legislature,” Spike responded.

Schultz wrote in his post that he was entering the “retirement phase” of his life and will be enjoying the sunshine in South Florida. But Jake questioned whether Schultz would open new businesses in the state.

“I imagine there’s a possibility that he does start other ventures up in Florida. As a tax base, that would be a friendlier place to start a business than Washington,” Jake said.

Is Washington still business-friendly?

He dug further into Schultz’s post, where Schultz said he and his wife moved from New York to Seattle in 1979, and he took a job at Starbucks in 1982. Schultz wrote that he hopes Washington will “remain a place for business and entrepreneurship to thrive, creating essential opportunity for those in Seattle and the surrounding areas.”

“I think it’s relevant because when you look at what Starbucks has recently done, we talked about them shutting down five more locations in Seattle,” Jake said. “We talked about Mayor Katie Wilson’s first act as mayor, which was going to a Starbucks protest and saying, ‘Don’t buy their coffee. I’m not going to buy their coffee, and neither should you.’ We talked about Starbucks expanding to Nashville. And now you have Howard Schultz on the same day they do the income tax, saying, ‘We’re going to Miami.'”

“I understand that sentiment,” Spike replied. “And everybody we’ve talked to has shared that sentiment.”

Spike said he talked to a business owner who said when he built his business in Seattle, the same taxation wasn’t there.

“Now that they’re putting these in place, it’s literally like pulling the ladder up behind you,” he shared. “We were talking about people who said, ‘Well, I can deserve to pay more because …’ You made your money back when it was a business-friendly environment. It’s not anymore.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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