Seattle Merchants Fight New Mortgage Taxes
The Chamber of Commerce warns that taxing mortgages will strangle the city's growth and drive away essential investment.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The taxation of mortgages and the prohibition of insurance combinations on rates, for which bills are now before the state legislature, were strongly disapproved by the trustees of the chamber of commerce at their meeting yesterday. The Chamber argued that taxing mortgages, notes, and bonds as personal property would drive out capital and increase the cost of borrowing for the city's residents. They noted that Washington had prospered without such restrictions and cautioned that these measures would retard growth.
“Universal experience has shown that measures of this character are injurious to the best interests of every community.”
The 1893 argument against the mortgage tax mirrors modern Seattle debates over commercial rent taxes and housing levies, reflecting the perennial tension between civic tax needs and the real estate development lobby's fear of 'driving away investment.'
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