The Tax Trap: How a Federal Order Threatened Seattle’s Revenue

A REVENUE DISARRANGEMENT.

We are informed by a revenue official, resident of this city, that instructions have arrived at the Port of Entry, in regard to the registration of vessels, which by some reason of existing statutes relative to assessments will work a serious disarrangement in our county revenues. The Territorial law specifies that vessels shall be taxed in the county where they hail from, and that they shall hail from the place of residence of at least one of the owners; but we learn that instructions have been received from the Secretary of the Treasury, by Collector Webster, requiring that all vessels in the district shall hail from the Port of Entry. In accordance with this order, new vessels, as the Nellie, though owned here, have had to swing the legend 'Port Townsend' abaft, instead of Seattle.

From the fact that vessels are taxed in the county they hail from, this proposed change will make a considerable difference with the revenues of all the counties where vessels are owned. It would throw hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars more of valuation than she is justly entitled to, into Jefferson county, at the expense of King, Kitsap, Island, Pierce, Thurston and other counties.

It is proposed to petition the Secretary of the Treasury to modify this order. The legislature does not meet before next fall, so that the law cannot be changed, or Congress memorialized on the subject before that time. It is therefore, probably, the province of the county commissioners to take official cognizance in the premises and initiate measures to redress the grievance.

The change is not required to be present registrations expire, of which some are running out every month; but orders have been issued to enforce the new arrangement after this date, in the case of all new vessels and all new applications for registration. The next Spring assessment will feel the reduction. Considering its bearing upon the property rights of counties, until shown some good reason for the order, we must regard it as a piece of arbitrary injustice and unwarrantable abuse of prerogative.