‘We’re getting there’: WA Rep. April Berg appears to confirm millionaires’ tax is path to broader income tax in leaked Zoom meeting

As Washington’s much-debated millionaires’ tax faces a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality, Future 42 shared a leaked Zoom meeting with “The John Curley Show” in which lawmakers paint the tax as the next step toward an official state income tax.

“We are now going to have more people paying their fair share at the amount they should, right? So you won’t have the highest-earning Washingtonians paying less than the lowest-earning Washingtonians,” Washington State Representative April Berg said in the leaked Zoom meeting obtained by Future 42. “Now, can I say it makes it perfect? No, but this is the next incremental step in tax justice. If you remember, we went from capital gains, now we’re at income tax. So we’re getting there, all right.”

“It’s pretty clear, she said it out loud. It’s an income tax,” Steve Gordon, board member and co-founder of Future 42, said on “The John Curley Show.” “Why else would you hire 300 tax collectors at the Department of Revenue for the supposedly small number this is going to get?”

Washington’s new millionaires’ tax (SB 6346), signed this year and taking effect in 2028, introduces a 9.9% tax specifically on annual taxable income exceeding $1 million per household.

“They say that the income will slide down to other lower taxpayers. Do you think that will happen? How do we fight that idea?” Berg asked in the leaked Zoom meeting.

“‘How do we fight that idea?'” KIRO host John Curley reiterated to Gordon. “Not, ‘how do we not have it happen?’ ‘How do we fight the idea?'”

“One of the things we were mindful of in the legislature was not to tie the hands of future legislators in terms of saying what will and won’t happen,” Berg continued in the meeting. “I have spoken from my own personal view. Given the questions, the fight, and the vitriol around this particular tax, I don’t see it going less than a million for quite some time.”

High earners’ payroll tax, wealth tax soon to come?

After listening to the leaked meeting, Gordon stated that a high-earners’ payroll tax, and then a wealth tax, will be on the horizon for Washington, as the state and its lawmakers will keep lowering the threshold for it as higher earners leave the state entirely.

“That’s why they keep selling this as a millionaires’ tax,” Gordon said. “It’s easy when somebody else has to pay the bill, and then, once it comes due for you, it’s not so fun anymore.”

Washington Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen even argued that a state income tax is not contrary to the constitution, and that the 1933 Supreme Court made a mistake. In the 1933 case Culliton v. Chase, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a voter-approved, graduated state income tax was unconstitutional, arguing that income is property and Washington’s Constitution requires property taxes to be uniform.

“I am asking for the Supreme Court in 2026, 93 years later, to take a second look at that,” Pedersen said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on Monday. “We know that the Supreme Court, all the time, both our Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, changes its mind periodically and has a new understanding. That’s all that’s going on. I just think they were wrong 93 years ago.”

Will there be an income tax in WA?

“So who’s winning in this thing?” Curley asked Gordon. “Do you feel as if the tide will turn, or at least you’ll be able to draw up the bridge, and the moat will be there with alligators, and there will be no income tax in the state of Washington?”

“I mean, a pretty clear reading of the constitution and the precedent would lead you to believe that this thing should just be thrown out on its face,” Gordon answered. “But we’ll have to fight it out. And it’s going to cost a lot of money to do that, and I guess we’ll go fight it. There will probably be a ballot initiative, and whether that’s a referendum or initiative, we’ll find out this week, because there’s a court case that’s going to challenge the ability to put this up for a referendum, which they purposely designed it not to be.

“I think what we’ve seen in the polling is that, if it’s just simply framed as a millionaires’ tax, it’s popular. It’s somebody else’s problem,” he continued. “And then, once you explain to people that there are no guardrails on it, that they can lower this tax anytime they want, to any level they want, people start going, ‘Oh, that’s not so great.’ And then the tide turns. So it’ll be up to the people, one way or another, to weigh in at the ballot box.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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