Bitcoin Magazine
Deloitte’s Rob Massey: What Bitcoin Investors Need to Know About The Changing IRS Tax Guidance
Bitcoin tax rules have evolved, but the self-assessment system hasn’t changed. Rob Massey, who has advised on crypto taxes at Deloitte since 2012, explains why using Bitcoin as money creates “new muscle” for reporting, which wallet moves are and aren’t realization events, and why 1099s from brokers will never be the complete picture. Plus the one thing he’d ask Bitcoiners to advocate for, and it isn’t a repeal.
Chapters:
0:00 Where Bitcoin Tax Rules Stand: Self-Assessment and Barter Transactions
1:25 Broker Reporting, 1099s and Why They’ll Never Be the Full Picture
2:06 No De Minimis Exemption Has Passed: Report Everything, Small or Large
3:00 What Business Leaders Ask Now: ETFs, Leverage and Bitcoin Lending
4:07 Paying the Plumber Is Taxable and the IRS Sees Everything On Chain
5:38 What to Ask Treasury For: More Guidance on Lending, Character and Basis
6:51 Bitcoin Across Borders: No Tax Treaties, Withholding and Subpart F
8:50 How Multinationals Compare Bitcoin and Stablecoins by Payment Corridor
10:06 Unreported 2015 Pizza? Attorney, CPA, Complete Narrative, Come Clean
12:37 Proving Cost Basis After Years of Moving Coins,
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
This post Deloitte’s Rob Massey: What Bitcoin Investors Need to Know About The Changing IRS Tax Guidance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.
Bitcoin Magazine
South Korea Weighs Fourth Delay of Crypto Tax, With 2029 Start Tied to U.S. Data Sharing
South Korea’s presidential office is reviewing a fourth postponement of the country’s 22% tax on crypto gains, with a 2029 start date gaining support among lawmakers and industry groups.
The tax is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2027. The presidential office said it is in talks with government agencies about a delay, citing gaps in the regulatory framework and the problem of treating domestic and overseas trades the same way, according to Newsis reporting.
The levy dates to a 2020 amendment to the Income Tax Act. It applies a 20% national rate plus a 2% local rate to annual income from the transfer or lending of virtual assets above a 2.5 million won ($1,888) deduction. The start date was set for 2022, then pushed to 2023, 2025 and 2027 as officials conceded that tax systems and investor protections were not ready.
The argument for 2029 rests on the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, the standard under which tax authorities swap crypto transaction records with one another. South Korea is among the first group of jurisdictions set to begin exchanges in 2027. The United States does not join until 2029.
A presidential office official told Newsis that the absence of U.S. trading data is the biggest bottleneck. Without it, the National Tax Service would have to chase overseas transactions one by one, and Korean traders on domestic exchanges would carry a heavier burden than those on foreign platforms or in self-custody.
On October 16, Democratic Party lawmaker Park Min-gyu and 13 colleagues filed a bill that would push the tax to January 1 of the second year after the first international data exchange, which works out to 2029. People Power Party lawmaker Song Eon-seok filed a separate bill to strike the crypto tax provisions from the law.
The Korea Digital Asset Business Association backed the 2029 date Thursday and asked the government to pass a digital asset law with stock-market-grade investor protections before any tax takes effect.
The pressure has come from several directions at once. Last week, two public petitions, one to repeal the tax and one to defer it two years, each cleared the 50,000 signatures that force a legislative review. Democratic Party leader Kim Min-seok called for a “thorough final review,” a shift for a party that had held the line on 2027.
Finance Minister Lee Hyeong-il told a parliamentary audit Thursday the government would decide “after carefully considering and gathering all opinions from the industry and the National Assembly.” Financial Services Commission chairman Lee Eog-weon said the same day that the tax should “take various circumstances into full consideration.”
The Virtual Asset User Protection Act took effect in July 2024, but the Digital Asset Basic Act, the licensing framework flagged alongside spot bitcoin ETF approval, has not passed. Lawmakers have questioned taxing a market before the law defining it exists.
The National Tax Service has not slowed down. It plans to publish a draft notice on taxable crypto income by the end of October. The government expects to settle its position through inter-agency talks after audits wrap, with a decision through National Assembly tax revisions between late November and early December.
This post South Korea Weighs Fourth Delay of Crypto Tax, With 2029 Start Tied to U.S. Data Sharing first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
TL;DR: The Blockchain Association has asked congressional leaders to advance bipartisan crypto tax changes, including a de minimis exemption and revised treatment of stablecoins and staking rewards.
For a person buying coffee with cryptocurrency, the tax rules can be far more complicated than the payment itself. A U.S. crypto trade group is asking Congress to address that mismatch with a new push for bipartisan digital-asset tax legislation.
The Blockchain Association sent a letter Thursday to congressional leaders in both parties, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. It also launched a website intended to help digital-asset users contact lawmakers about tax policy.
The association wants a meaningful de minimis exemption for small crypto transactions, under which everyday low-value spending would not trigger the same tax calculations as a major investment sale. It also argues for treating qualifying stablecoins more like cash for tax purposes.
Another proposal concerns rewards from mining and staking. The group favors a framework that treats those rewards as self-created property taxed upon disposition, rather than automatically imposing a tax event at receipt.
These are policy requests by an industry advocacy organization, not changes already adopted by Congress or the Internal Revenue Service. The letter contains a range of further priorities, including clarity for transfers that do not change economic exposure and reporting rules intended to balance compliance with privacy.
Crypto transactions can cross boundaries between payments, financial investments and network participation. Ordinary tax categories do not always match that activity neatly. Moving a token between wallets a person controls, for example, has a different economic character from selling it at a profit.
The association says 67 million Americans hold or use digital assets. That is its advocacy figure and should not be mistaken for a fresh government census. The larger policy point is that an expanding market can make small frictions disproportionately expensive to taxpayers and administrators.
There are countervailing concerns. Lawmakers will need to consider the revenue implications of exemptions, the possibility of tax avoidance through transaction splitting and how reporting obligations would work for intermediaries.
For investors, the practical message is restraint: a proposed exemption is not a license to disregard existing records or reporting duties. The association has opened a legislative campaign; Congress has not yet resolved its arguments.
Any eventual bill will be judged not only by whether it simplifies cryptocurrency transactions, but by whether the rules are clear enough for wallets, exchanges, taxpayers and the IRS to apply consistently.
Source: theblockchainassociation.org original announcement or data.
Related Reading: Bitcoin; stablecoins; staking.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
South Korea is approaching another decision point on its long-delayed cryptocurrency gains tax, with exchanges and policymakers preparing to discuss whether the January 2027 start date is realistic.
TL;DR: The country’s planned crypto tax has already been deferred three times. A new proposal would push implementation toward 2029, but no additional delay has been enacted.
Finance officials are expected to meet representatives of major domestic exchanges on October 20. The industry is arguing that the systems needed to handle different transaction types and calculate cost bases are still incomplete. A rushed launch, exchanges say, risks creating inconsistent tax treatment or driving activity to offshore platforms.
South Korea’s planned rate is commonly described as 22% after local tax is included, rather than a simple 20% all-in charge. The question now is less about whether crypto gains should ever be taxable than whether the supporting reporting infrastructure is ready for millions of transactions across different venues.
A lawmaker’s proposal would link the effective date to cross-border data sharing through the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, potentially moving the start to 2029. That measure requires legislative action; a meeting with exchanges cannot, by itself, change the law.
For investors, the current scheduled date remains January 2027 unless lawmakers decide otherwise. For exchanges, a later timetable could buy time to build reporting systems, but another postponement would also prolong policy uncertainty. South Korea has reached this crossroads before, which is why a proposed delay should not be reported as a settled outcome.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Latvia has passed a change to the way crypto investment-account gains are taxed, shifting attention from individual trades to what an investor ultimately withdraws from an eligible account.
TL;DR: New Latvian legislation taxes qualifying account withdrawals above deposits and provides a one-time 2027 process for declaring older holdings. The country is also considering crypto tax payments, but that payment service is not yet established.
The reform passed parliament on October 15. Under the investment-account approach described in reporting on the law, moving between crypto assets inside the account no longer automatically creates the same tax event as withdrawing more value than the amount contributed. Investors will still need records that establish their deposits and withdrawals.
There is also an attempt to resolve a practical problem for people who bought digital assets years ago and cannot reconstruct their original cost basis. A declaration mechanism would let eligible holders regularize historical positions at a 10% charge based on their value at the end of 2026. Applications are scheduled for April 1 through May 31, 2027, with payment due by July 23.
The proposed ability to pay taxes with cryptocurrency is a separate issue. Officials have discussed it as a potential step for 2027, but the currencies, provider and operational arrangements have not been announced. It should not be confused with the tax law parliament has already adopted.
For the wider EU market, Latvia’s move illustrates how governments are adapting old tax concepts to assets that can be exchanged continuously. The details of account eligibility and recordkeeping will decide how helpful the change is in practice.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is bringing together leaders from Amazon, Spotify, the Port of Seattle, organized labor, technology, cleantech, small business and other sectors as part of a new task force focused on rebuilding and diversifying the city’s economy.
Wilson on Wednesday announced 18 members of the Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force, which will look for ways to remove barriers to business growth, attract and retain companies and improve the process of starting and operating a business in Seattle.
“I’m charging this task force with identifying where the City can make connections, remove barriers and provide support within individual industries and across our economy,” Wilson said. “We need to diversify our economy while expanding opportunities for local entrepreneurs and young people.”
The effort builds on the city’s recently released Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy report, which called for Seattle to diversify beyond its heavy reliance on large technology companies and focus on sectors including artificial intelligence, cleantech, maritime, life sciences and space.
That report found that companies with at least 100 employees accounted for 74.5% of net job growth in the Seattle metro area from 2014 to 2023, while mid-sized companies accounted for just 16.6%.
The economic challenges have also put a spotlight on Seattle’s tax structure. As GeekWire recently reported, Seattle lost roughly 24,000 jobs between March 2020 and March 2025 even as city tax collections continued to grow, shifting more of the tax burden onto businesses.
Wilson has responded in part by freezing JumpStart tax rates in her proposed 2027 budget, citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector.
The new task force will initially focus on downtown revitalization, business attraction and retention, cross-sector collaboration, and making it easier to open and operate a business. The task force also comes as Seattle’s business community has pressed City Hall for action on public safety, with dozens of regional CEOs recently calling for a 100-day plan with measurable goals and progress reports.
“Seattle is open for business,” said Beto Yarce, director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development.
The task force will hold industry-specific roundtables and listening sessions this year, with initial findings due in February 2027 and a final report expected in November 2027. Here’s a look at the task force members:
Editor’s note: GeekWire publishes guest opinions to highlight a range of perspectives on issues shaping the tech and startup community. To submit a guest column, email tips@geekwire.com.
This fall, Washington state voters will once again have to defend their economic future and core competitive edge by voting yes on Initiative 645 to repeal the state income tax.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers established the new state income tax. Supporters claim that this tax will only impact higher-income earners. But the measure includes broad new income taxing powers that make every Washingtonian and those doing business in the state a target.
How do we know this? Legislators have made it clear by their actions — and actions speak louder than words!
Most notably, the income tax was written specifically to cover pensions, reversing Washington’s previous commitment to not tax pension retirement income. While teacher, firefighter and other pensioners are not initially paying the state income tax, the only reason to make their income subject to the tax is to require them to pay when it is lowered to apply to them.
Second, Olympia actually voted twice on the income tax — once to pass the income tax, and a second time to ensure they could expand it to everyone. They wanted to make clear their intent to voters.
Finally, the income tax is already driving people out of the state, which will result in lower tax revenues. We can be confident that Sen. Jamie Pedersen (who has stated publicly that he supports a universal income tax on all Washingtonians) and the Legislature will use that shortfall as justification to apply the tax to many more Washingtonians. So, unless you vote yes on I-645, you can expect to pay the income tax soon.
Even the state’s most prominent Democrats are calling out Olympia’s runaway spending. Former Gov. Christine Gregoire told Washington business leaders recently that Olympia has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting the state budget has grown from $33 billion to $80 billion since she left office. Former Gov. Gary Locke, similarly, called Olympia’s spending “out of control.”
Two Democratic governors, sounding the same alarm, should tell legislators to focus on spending cuts, not tax increases. But, instead of looking for savings, Washington’s political leaders passed the largest tax and spending increase ($9.3 billion) in state history in 2025, and then followed it up with another $2.3 billion spending increase in 2026.
The pattern is as clear in Washington as it is in other states that are falling behind competitively: no matter how much citizens hand over in taxes, legislators always think it’s never enough. Giving lawmakers even more of our tax dollars when they have failed to responsibly manage what they have hurts everyone in the state.
Beyond the impact to personal paychecks, there are two long-term consequences that will negatively impact voters — whether they pay the tax or not.
First, job creators and job opportunities are leaving the state. National IRS migration data already shows high earners leaving high-tax states at an accelerating rate. Washington ranks sixth highest in the nation for losing higher-income residents, and a state income tax will accelerate this trend. A 2026 Association of Washington Business survey found nearly 1 in 4 Washington employers are now considering relocating out of state, nearly triple the rate from just a year earlier.
Companies such as Starbucks, moving a large share of its corporate workforce to Nashville, are shifting operations and jobs out of the state in response to the increasingly hostile tax climate and the costs of doing business. Sadly, the result is that Washington has an unemployment rate hovering near 5%, tied for sixth highest in the country and nearly a full percentage point above the national average.
Second, avoiding the tax effectively means cutting all ties to Washington. Under the new law, it appears taxpayers can only shed their Washington domicile by spending 30 days or fewer in the state a year and selling their home. It’s no surprise active home listings are up an average 27% in much of Washington this year.
This rule is also an existential threat for the state’s largest nonprofits, as financial advisors are already telling clients the “gold standard” for anyone trying to sever ties is to stop philanthropic giving in Washington entirely.
The last time Washingtonians voted on an income tax was in 2010. That income tax proposal, I-1098, was rejected by a 64%-36% voting margin. Companies including Microsoft, Boeing and Expedia, as well as the founders of Amazon and T-Mobile, supported the effort to stop the income tax. They were right to do so for the benefit of their employees and the citizens of Washington.
In the years since, economic growth and investment enabled the state spending budget to dramatically increase from under $30 billion to more than $80 billion without an income tax. Washington cannot afford to follow the path of states like New York and Oregon, where out-of-control spending leads to higher taxes and an increasingly difficult climate for families and businesses. We need a state that can compete!
This November, voters have the opportunity to send a message to politicians by doing what they have done time and again: vote yes on I-645 to repeal the state income tax and help Washington succeed for generations to come.
Seattle’s tax collections have nearly tripled over the past decade, soaring from $900 million in 2013 to a projected $2.8 billion in 2026. But who pays those taxes, and how the tax revenue is collected, looks vastly different today than a decade ago.
A new report released by ECOnorthwest, commissioned jointly by the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, show city tax revenues far outstripping population and job growth, driven by targeted corporate taxes on a small pool of major employers.
Between 2013 and 2025, Seattle’s tax revenues jumped 172%, outpacing population growth (31%), job growth (23%), and local inflation (50%). During that period, real tax growth grew 5.6 times faster than population and 7.5 times faster than employment.
The findings come as city leaders, major tech employers and regional business groups grapple with shifting post-pandemic work patterns and a political climate that has frequently placed large technology companies like Amazon in its sights.
According to the report, broad-based core taxes, such as property, sales, utility, and general Business & Occupation (B&O) taxes, comprised 83% of city tax collections in 2013. By 2026, those core broad taxes are projected to drop to just 52% of the total revenue.
Replacing them are narrow, targeted tax levies:
Combined, two taxes that did not exist five years ago now account for nearly a third of all business tax dollars collected by the city. Overlap among top taxpayers means fewer than 20 companies account for roughly $356 million in annual City of Seattle revenue.
“Seattle’s tax collections are growing far faster than its population, jobs or inflation. Employers are carrying more of that burden. That trajectory is not sustainable,” said Seattle Metro Chamber president & CEO Joe Nguyen. “The question cannot always be how to collect more money. It must be how to deliver better results with the money we already have and build a tax structure that helps our economy grow.”
The heavy pivot to business revenue coincides with divergent employment trends between Seattle and its neighboring Eastside hubs.
Between March 2020 and March 2025, Seattle lost approximately 24,000 jobs, while the remainder of King County added 21,000. The report notes that Seattle lost 18,000 jobs in the single year leading up to March 2025 alone. And that figure that does not yet capture the full impact of major remote work policies and tech layoffs announced across the region.
The report arrives on the heels of previous GeekWire coverage tracking regional tech dynamics, including the shift of high tech jobs from Seattle to Bellevue, as well as broader political shifts in how West Coast hubs are responding to tech sector backlash and the AI boom.
However, in a sign that Mayor Katie Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns, she proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget that would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.
Seattle’s economic engine is stalling, and downtown is taking the brunt of the hit.
Between 2024 and 2025, Seattle shed 18,065 total jobs, with a staggering 70% of those losses—13,000 jobs—coming directly from the city’s downtown core, according to a new report released by the Downtown Seattle Association.
In some ways, it’s a tale of two cities.
While Seattle proper shrank, neighboring Eastside tech hub Bellevue gained 5,375 jobs over the same timeframe, highlighting a shifting center of gravity within the Puget Sound region.
A lot of that growth in Bellevue, and decline in Seattle is coming from one company: Amazon.
The online retail and cloud computing powerhouse employed 15,700 workers in Bellevue at the end of 2025, making it the largest employer in Bellevue at 9.85% of the total workforce, according to the city’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. That’s up from just a few hundred employees in Bellevue nearly a decade ago.
Amazon employs about 49,000 people in Seattle proper, though the Puget Sound Business Journal noted this week that the company has shed office space in downtown Seattle and dramatically slowed employment in the city.
Other key findings from the Downtown Seattle Association report:
The latest findings build on a growing chorus of criticism regarding the city’s fiscal climate. A June analysis by the DSA argued that Seattle’s controversial “JumpStart” payroll expense tax—passed in 2020 and targeting major employers like Amazon—is backfiring by driving business across Lake Washington.
The June report highlighted that since 2020, downtown Seattle lost roughly 30,000 jobs and saw office building values plummet 48%, while Bellevue—which levies no comparable head tax—gained jobs and expanded commercial values by 7%.
Though JumpStart projects $388 million in revenue this year, about 70% of that relies on just 10 major companies, underscoring how heavily Seattle leans on a handful of tech giants.
City of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has consistently pushed back against blaming downtown’s struggles on any single tax, pointing to broader post-pandemic remote-work trends, high interest rates and national tech restructurings that affect cities nationwide. She credited JumpStart with saving the city from drastic service cuts during the pandemic and noted that Seattle’s recovery remains resilient.
However, in a sign that Mayor Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns in the region, she last week proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget, which would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.
Citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector, the mayor’s freeze leaves the payroll tax untouched to offer big employers a period of tax stability, even as she continues directing JumpStart revenues beyond their original intent to cover core general fund operations.
“These were a set of taxes that may have provided some short-term gain to the city coffers, but are inflicting long-term pain,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes told GeekWire in an interview in June. “We predicted that at the time, and were sort of dismissed and ignored.”
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson on Tuesday proposed a budget that closes the city’s inherited deficit largely through spending cuts and rules out new taxes on big business. That includes any increase to the JumpStart payroll tax she helped create, a decision that comes amid a rocky stretch for the region’s tech industry.
The $9.1 billion proposed 2027 budget, the first year of the city’s 2027–28 biennial plan, aims to erase a $175 million General Fund deficit without new progressive revenue.
Wilson’s plan cuts nearly $50 million a year in General Fund spending and eliminates 128 full-time positions, 15 of which are currently filled. It also continues using JumpStart revenue to prop up general city services, while keeping more than 30% of the tax’s annual revenue — about $140 million — dedicated to affordable housing.
Speaking at the Seattle Central Library on Tuesday, Wilson framed the decision as a response to economic conditions.
“We are watching seismic shifts in the tech sector, which anchors so much of our regional economy,” Wilson said. Raising additional progressive revenue presents high risks while downtown remains fragile, she added, noting that expanding taxes like JumpStart is “not the right move” right now.
The stance marks a notable turn for Wilson. Before taking office, she helped design and push for JumpStart as a community activist. As recently as July, she called raising the tax an option for closing the budget gap. On Tuesday, she acknowledged she is “continuing to direct JumpStart dollars beyond the programs it was originally intended for,” and said she aims to grow the tax’s housing share in future budgets.
Passed by the City Council in July 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, JumpStart was pitched as a way to fund affordable housing, climate initiatives, small business support, and equitable development. It applies to businesses with large Seattle payrolls and taxes the pay of employees earning roughly $194,000 or more, at rates ranging up to 2.55% depending on payroll size and salary levels.
Because of high salaries and equity-heavy compensation across major tech firms, the tax falls heavily on big tech. Just 10 top taxpayers, led by companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google, account for roughly 70% of JumpStart revenue.
JumpStart was designed with guardrails to protect spending on housing and community development, but it quickly became a lifeline for City Hall during post-pandemic revenue shortfalls. Under Wilson’s predecessors, the city routinely shifted roughly $200 million or more a year from the tax into the General Fund to patch structural deficits.
By holding rates steady, Wilson’s budget offers Seattle tech employers a period of tax stability amid growing friction over the city’s business climate. Business groups have long argued that heavy payroll taxes undermine Seattle’s competitiveness, pushing job growth and tech investment toward Eastside hubs like Bellevue and Redmond that don’t impose comparable payroll taxes.
That debate was reignited in June by a Downtown Seattle Association report examining the tax five years after its passage. The report tied JumpStart to the loss of about 30,000 downtown jobs and found that downtown Seattle office properties lost 48% of their assessed value between 2020 and 2025, while downtown Bellevue’s rose 7%.
While Wilson cautioned at the time against blaming downtown’s complex post-pandemic recovery on a single policy, her decision to hold JumpStart rates steady reflects her administration’s apparent willingness to listen to business concerns as City Hall works to revitalize the commercial core.
On Tuesday, DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes welcomed her budget, saying that not adding business taxes while employers face headwinds is “important and a helpful signal to the business community.”
Last week, during the launch of Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound, a new regional initiative brought together by Challenge Seattle to strengthen the area’s tech strategy, Microsoft President Brad Smith referred to the tax.
As structured, the payroll tax “is really a tax on tech jobs,” Smith said, “and that’s why you’re seeing more tech jobs move from Seattle to places like Bellevue and the Eastside.” He noted that San Francisco abolished its payroll tax the same year Seattle adopted one, in 2021.
“You should tax things you want to discourage, like cigarettes, not jobs,” Smith said at the time.
On Tuesday, Amazon offered its reaction to the mayor’s budget plan.
“We appreciate Mayor Wilson putting forward a budget that focuses on making use of existing resources,” an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire. “Like Mayor Wilson, we believe the city’s first priority should be making sure those resources are used effectively and deliver results for residents.”
Beyond payroll taxes, Wilson’s budget speech and recent executive actions touched on several tech-adjacent priorities:
Housing permitting acceleration: Following an executive order last month launching a Housing Production Task Force, the budget funds a new Affordable Housing Ombud position to help community developers navigate city permitting faster.
Algorithmic pricing transparency: The budget funds implementation of the city’s Fair and Transparent Pricing policy. The City Council was scheduled to take a final vote Tuesday on the ordinance, making Seattle the first city in the country to ban algorithmic price discrimination (also known as surveillance pricing) for groceries.
Economic diversification and AI exposure: The budget proposal follows an executive order Wilson signed earlier this month aimed at diversifying Seattle’s economy. A city-commissioned report warned that local employment is 42% more exposed to AI disruption than the national average, prompting the order’s call for targeted support to retain growing startups.
Green technology investments: The budget maintains JumpStart-funded Green New Deal programs, including building decarbonization, urban forest support, and clean energy apprenticeships.
With the proposed budget now formally submitted, the Seattle City Council begins a nine-week review process chaired by Councilmember Dan Strauss. Public hearings are scheduled for Oct. 6 and Nov. 5, and councilmembers have until Oct. 20 to submit proposed amendments before Strauss presents a revised balancing package in early November.
A final council vote to adopt the final budget is slated for Nov. 20.
Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh each had their moment in the sun a century ago, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said Monday — and then the warning lights started flashing, and their leaders at the time failed to heed them.
“Well, here we are. It is 2026,” Smith said at a press conference, flanked by dozens of regional leaders, with the Seattle skyline behind them. “And the warning signs are flashing on our economy.”
Smith was speaking at the launch of the Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound, a Challenge Seattle initiative that brought together roughly 50 elected officials from King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties — two county executives, around 20 mayors, port commissioners and about a dozen state legislators — along with labor leaders and business executives, behind a 20-point plan for reversing the region’s slide.
The region lost nearly 7,000 jobs in 2025, according to a report issued by the group, the first time in two decades outside a recession or the pandemic that Seattle-area employment growth has trailed the nation’s. Washington has fallen from 32nd to 47th in CNBC’s ranking of states by cost of doing business since 2017.
An ‘intentional’ regional tech strategy: The report makes a pointed observation about technology: aerospace has a coordinated regional agenda and tech doesn’t, despite tech accounting for nearly one in 10 regional jobs and about 24% of total payroll.
Aerospace knows what it’s working on: the next airplane, the space industry, sustainable fuels, supplier diversification. Technology, “despite being one of Puget Sound’s defining economic anchors, does not yet have an equally intentional regional strategy,” the report says.
Without one, it adds, the region risks losing “jobs, technology investment, headquarters, talent, and company growth” to the Bay Area, New York, Boston and Austin. The goal is “not simply to promote growth, but to protect and strengthen the region’s position as a leading technology center.”
Challenge Seattle says it will write that strategy with the Puget Sound Regional Council, built around two priorities: keeping the big tech companies investing here, and making it easier for startups to scale. Related recommendations target industrial space for AI hardware startups, commercial space, and the region’s fusion cluster.
The report sets no budget or measure of success for the tech strategy, and no deadline beyond its general goal of progress within three years.
A regional wake-up call: Many of the recommendations are changes to how local government operates, not new spending: deadlines for permit decisions, a designated business contact in every city and county, and a strategy for dealing with the way taxes stack across state, county and city.
“This is, for us, a wake-up call,” said former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, CEO of Challenge Seattle, launching the initiative during the press conference. “We cannot resort to relying on yesterday’s success while tomorrow’s jobs go somewhere else.”
April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, said businesses need predictability and enough margin to invest, innovate and take risks — but “working people need margins, too.”
King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said his office has hired an economic development team and is beginning an internal permitting audit. “AI is transforming our economy seemingly overnight,” he said, calling the 7,000 lost jobs “quite alarming.”
The group also released a playbook for Puget Sound mayors, drawn from interviews and surveys with local leaders, on building what it calls a culture of partnership with business.
Seattle as a Microsoft litmus test: Asked by GeekWire during the press conference what it would take for Microsoft to return and grow in Seattle proper, where it previously had offices in South Lake Union, Smith first pointed out that he was standing in front of Redmond Mayor Angela Birney.
“We have a great mayor, and every day we get up and we’re excited to go to work in Redmond, Washington,” he said, to laughter from the assembled officials.
Smith also pushed back on the premise: Microsoft moved to the Eastside from Albuquerque in 1979 and never had a large presence in Seattle, so he wouldn’t use the city as the point of comparison.
Then he turned to Seattle’s JumpStart payroll expense tax.
As structured, the payroll tax “is really a tax on tech jobs,” Smith said, “and that’s why you’re seeing more tech jobs move from Seattle to places like Bellevue and the Eastside.” He noted that San Francisco abolished its payroll tax the same year Seattle adopted one, in 2021.
“You should tax things you want to discourage, like cigarettes, not jobs,” he said.
He tied the issue to the larger impact of AI on jobs. “We need people to succeed to some degree in a world of AI,” Smith said. “And you don’t want to make the cost of employing people more expensive, at the same time that AI is increasingly adding its own new form of competition.”
“There’s nothing that would lead to the decline in jobs in this state faster than a replication of the JumpStart tax,” he said. “And if Seattle wanted to do one thing to increase jobs in Seattle, it ought to revisit whether a payroll tax makes any sense.”
Then he added a caveat: “That’s probably something that would impact other companies more than Microsoft.”
Amazon, which has been reported to be the largest payer of the tax, did not have a speaker at Monday’s event. Individual Amazon execs are listed in the acknowledgments in the Challenge Seattle report, though the report says participation doesn’t imply endorsement.
View from Olympia: During the press conference, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, was asked whether Washington risks becoming an outlier among states on taxes. The Legislature has been correcting course, he said, pointing to two moves from this year’s session.
One was the estate tax. Lawmakers raised the top rate to 35% in 2025, the highest in the country, and reversed themselves this March, returning it to 20% as of July.
The other was the millionaires tax — a 9.9% tax on household income above $1 million, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson and projected to raise roughly $3 billion a year. It doesn’t take effect until 2028, and Seattle tech leaders warned it would push founders and investors out of the state.
Pedersen cast it as the fix for a different kind of outlier status: Washington’s business and sales taxes are high because it’s one of the few states with no personal income tax at all. The new tax would let Washington “join 41 other states that have a personal income tax,” he said.
Voters get the last word in November. Initiative 645, backed by Let’s Go Washington, qualified for the ballot in July and would repeal the tax. If it survives, Pedersen said, a statewide payroll tax is “vanishingly unlikely” next session.
Seattle’s mayor weighs in: Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who was an architect of the JumpStart tax before running for office, was not among the speakers at the press conference. She opened the regional session that followed, and said the region needs to do a better job telling its own story.
“There are some forces and interests that are pushing a narrative that does not want Seattle or our region to succeed,” Wilson said, “and we must counter that with a new commitment to a shared sense of destiny, because Seattle’s success is Bellevue’s success, Pierce County’s success is Snohomish County’s success.”
She called it a fragile moment and said the time to act is now, pointing to the economic actions she announced last week in conjunction with an independent report commissioned by the city and released by Seattle’s Office of Economic Development.
That report, “Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy,” found Seattle’s tax structure unique among peer cities in the way it “specifically penalizes the hiring of senior, high-compensation workers,” with the burden falling overwhelmingly on large tech employers.
Hiring a software engineer at $650,000 in total compensation costs about $17,000 more a year in Seattle than in Bellevue at JumpStart’s top rate, the researchers found.
The city report, conducted by the economic consulting firm Formation, said Seattle should bet on cleantech, the sector where the city owns the utility, writes the building codes and controls permitting and land use. It’s one place where Seattle has real leverage over its own economy, the researchers argued.
“It’s striking how much agreement we share across labor, businesses, and government,” Wilson said. “This is not a call to ignore our challenges, but to tackle them with a shared sense of possibility.”
She did not address the payroll tax in her remarks.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: A study commissioned by the City of Seattle says the city is not in decline but is in danger — finding that 10 companies, nine of them in tech, pay three-quarters of the payroll tax on large employers, and that the tax structure uniquely penalizes the hiring of senior, high-compensation workers.
The report says Seattle should be most concerned about AI but most active in cleantech, the one industry the city can actually shape, since it owns the electric utility and controls permitting, building codes and land use.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Times and Newsday sue Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing them of copying hundreds of thousands of articles to train their AI models, putting Microsoft’s hometown paper against a company that helps fund some of its journalism.
And Apple’s first foldable arrives as the iPhone Duo, reviving the name of the dual-screen phone Microsoft gave up on in 2023, with Surface fans arguing Apple took more than the name.
Which leads us to a new GeekWire Trivia Challenge about the Microsoft products that Apple later turned into categories. Stick around to the final segment to see if you can figure it out.
Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
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