Seattle has collected far less revenue from its “gun violence tax” than projected, a court-ordered disclosure has confirmed. (Dave Workman)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
More than a year after TGM filed a Public Records Act request with the City of Seattle for its “gun violence tax” revenue, the city – under court order – finally released data that confirmed what tax opponents long suspected, that the revenue forecast was grossly overestimated.
The city provided TGM with the revenue figure for all of 2016 which totaled $103,766.22, far short of the projected $300,000 to $500,000. But TGM had to sue in King County Superior Court to get the information.
“We suspected all along that the city’s predictions were fabricated,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which supported the TGM lawsuit. “That’s why we were happy to support the First Amendment-based lawsuit initiated by editor Dave Workman. Earlier this year when the city would only acknowledge that it had collected ‘less than $200,000’ we were certain that Seattle’s stubborn reluctance to reveal their actual revenue was a matter of embarrassment.”
SAF owns TGM, and Gottlieb serves as the magazine’s publisher.
Dave Workman
Gottlieb pointed to an editorial in the Seattle Times that admitted it was “reasonable” for opponents “to assume regulatory intent by a City Council that talked about limiting gun sales,” and acknowledged that the city “didn’t help its credibility by concealing how much the gun tax raised…(The city’s) recalcitrance will result in city taxpayers paying gun advocates $35,000 in legal fees.” That doesn’t include the penalty against the city for withholding the information, he added.
“When you consider the money Seattle spent dodging Workman’s Public Records Act request,” Gottlieb observed, “combined with the fact that this gun tax caused one major retailer to move out of the city and another to refer his customers to a store in Fife, plus the losses in B&O taxes along with not coming remotely close to projections, this outrageous tax has resulted in a net loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
When the city council hastily adopted the gun tax two years ago, then-Council President Tim Burgess offered up the original revenue predictions. But one of the city’s two major gun retailers moved his operation out of the city, to nearby Lynnwood. He told a local reporter that his Seattle customers followed him to the new location, and he even picked up new clients, but none of that revenue went to the city.
Another large dealer began sending gun buyers to its sister store in Fife, in a neighboring county about 30 miles away. Those lost sales also brought the “gun tax” revenue plummeting.
The successful Public Records Act (PRA) lawsuit sought only the first quarter revenues, which came to $24,440.71. The second quarter revenue was even worse, at $22,531.82.
Seattle has decided not to appeal the judge’s ruling, and will be paying SAF’s attorney fees and a nominal penalty.
