I arrived right here as a 17-month-old refugee from Vietnam in 1975. I constructed my profession right here, beginning out volunteering on Gary Locke’s gubernatorial marketing campaign in 1996, to operating native races on each side of the aisle. Then I spent almost twenty years in know-how communications at Microsoft and T-Cell, and as president of a nationwide wi-fi trade affiliation. I don’t earn 1,000,000 {dollars} a 12 months. I gained’t owe a dime beneath ESSB 6346. However I consider this can be one of the consequential errors Olympia has made in a era.
I’m not writing to defend millionaires. I’m writing as a result of I learn the invoice, learn the case legislation and wrote on to Sen. Jamie Pedersen, the invoice’s lead sponsor, to grasp the authorized coverage reasoning. His response didn’t resolve my issues. It deepened them.
Begin with what the Legislature truly did. In 2024, lawmakers adopted Initiative 2111 by overwhelming margins of 76-21 within the Home and 38-11 within the Senate. That initiative banned Washington from taxing “any particular person individual on any type of private earnings.” Lower than two years later, the identical Legislature made an exception to that ban, in the identical invoice that wants the exception to be authorized. In the event that they genuinely believed this tax was an excise and never an earnings tax, they wouldn’t have wanted to amend I-2111 in any respect. That modification is a legislative admission that that is precisely what it seems to be: a tax on private earnings.
Then there’s the ground debate. Over 25 hours, Republicans launched amendments to completely lock the $1 million threshold, guaranteeing it might by no means be lowered to achieve middle-income earners. Democrats voted down each one. In addition they inserted an emergency clause to dam a public referendum, although this tax doesn’t take impact till 2028. There may be nothing “emergency” a couple of tax that gained’t be collected for 2 years.
The constitutional downside is easy. Since 1933, Washington’s Supreme Court docket has held that earnings is property beneath our Structure, and property taxes should be uniform. The court docket reaffirmed this in 2023 when it upheld the capital good points tax, however solely as a result of that tax focused a selected voluntary transaction: promoting investments. The “millionaires tax” has no such limiting precept. It taxes “the receipt of earnings,” which is simply one other manner of claiming it taxes earnings. In 1936, the court docket rejected this precise formulation in Jensen v. Henneford. That precedent has by no means been overruled, but the Legislature debated this invoice for a complete day with out meaningfully partaking with the case that almost all straight forecloses its authorized principle.
I perceive the argument that Washington’s tax system is regressive, however the path to tax reform runs via the Structure — not round it. Washington voters have been requested a minimum of 10 occasions whether or not they need an earnings tax. They’ve stated no each time. The response shouldn’t be to move one anyway and block a public vote.
What issues me most is the door that this opens. If the Supreme Court docket overrules Culliton v. Chase, the 1933 precedent, there is no such thing as a longer any constitutional barrier to a graduated earnings tax on all Washingtonians. The $1 million threshold turns into a political alternative, not a authorized constraint, and the Legislature has already signaled it has no intention of holding it the place it’s.
I’ve watched billionaires Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz depart, as corporations quietly consider whether or not Washington continues to be the fitting place to develop. However the deeper concern is less complicated: The Legislature made a promise to voters in 2024 and broke it in 2026. They blocked the general public from having a say. And now, with the governor’s signature, lawmakers are asking the courts to rewrite 93 years of settled legislation to validate a invoice they know is constitutionally poor.
I don’t make 1,000,000 {dollars}. However I do know what it appears like when a door is opened and no one has plans to shut it.
