Controversy over Income Tax continuous. Business Ideas, Several Washington State’s biggest names in business are on conflicting sides about the efforts to enforce an income tax on the state’s wealthiest residents. One of the examples is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, who each contributed $100,000 this week to a campaign fighting off the income tax effort and Bill Gates Sr., father of the Microsoft co-founder and a supporter of a change to the state’s tax structure who has given his time and $500,000 to the effort.

All of them would be taxed under Initiative 1098. The Initiative 1098 would enforce a 5 percent tax on any income above $200,000, or $400,000 for couples. Individuals who make more than $500,000, or couples who get more than $1 million would face a 9 percent tax on income above that amount.

Income tax has been tried over the years in Washington. But there was just little success. Voters have defeated successive attempts to reform the constitution for a state income tax. The most current was in 1973. Early this year, voters in Oregon supported higher income taxes on couples earning more than $250,000. New York, Maryland and some other states have also increased taxes on their wealthiest residents in recent years.