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Dispatch from Seattle: Goodbye to Another Small Business
The reasons Hardwick’s Hardware (a Seattle institution of 88 years) is leaving Seattle for northern Idaho? Crime, and taxes.
The owner detailed the break-ins, and endless tax forms. Washington’s Business and Occupation tax is a gross-receipts tax, not dependent upon whether a business makes a profit or not. It is very easy for politicians to punish an entire industry by increasing the B & O tax rate or the opposite for a favored industry.