There was an initiative in Seattle to charge a head tax, with one of the likely reasons to go after companies like Amazon that put a lot of what would be profit back into R&D, keeping the technical profits low. There was a lot of pushback from the Seattle community since the initiative was created and pushed from the city council themselves and not the people and thankfully it was defeated. Sounds bites like 'TAX AMAZON!' sound very good to people who think you're taxing Amazon specifically, but after people see that it's actually taxing a lot of other companies including small-ish companies it turns out to be a not-so-good proposition.
Because it wasn't voted on [by the people], the council just came up with it and voted themselves (a whole 9 people). Enough people signed the petition recently to make it come to a vote, hence them repealing it today - because the people didn't want it.
Good, this was a terrible choice made by an inept city council without the backing of the people. Other ways need to be explored before throwing more money at the system. Now people need to actually work on the problem instead of fundraising.