OLYMPIA, Wash — Angela Rosen opened Penelope and The Beauty Bar inside the Fairmont Olympic Hotel 10 years ago. COVID-19 safety rules required her to cease operations completely for much of last year. Now she’s open again but at just 25% capacity.
“I did not sleep that night. And I just like was beside myself,” she said. She was referring to the night after she got an unemployment insurance premium bill that went from $500 a month to $8000 a month, an increase of 1600%.
“The numbers don’t work, because you’re forced to be at 25% capacity. There’s no way you can make it,” Rosen said.
The increase was driven by the huge spike in unemployment benefit payments required by the COVID-19-driven economic shutdown.
Today, Governor Inslee signed Senate Bill 5061.
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The new law prevents an unemployment tax hike of $920 million that would have taken place in 2021. It also prevents a total of $1.7 billion in tax hikes over the next five years.
“This will provide critical relief to businesses that wouldn’t have otherwise experienced a really significant spikes in their unemployment insurance rates,” Inslee said.
The impact on individual businesses will depend on their industry. But Rosen and others will still face an increase.
“Could it be down to maybe, only instead of 1600%, maybe she goes up a 100%. It really depends on a lot of factors,” said Bob Barrett, vice president of the Association for Washington Business.
He says the new law accounts just for COVID-19-caused job loss in 2020 and that more action will be needed to respond to COVID-19′s impact this year.
“Well, I just hope, I hope that you will, the state will just try to help the small businesses and that this tax won’t come back in the future,” Rosen said.
Cox Media Group
