Harger: They call it a ‘millionaire tax.’ It’s income tax. And they won’t let you vote on it.
Feb 24, 2026, 5:55 AM | Updated: 2:53 pm
Within the next couple of weeks, Olympia may pass a bill most of you have never seen, on a topic voters have rejected 10 times, using a procedural move that makes sure you can’t reject it quickly.
That’s where we are this morning.
It’s being called a millionaire’s tax. That’s not quite right.
Lawmakers are calling it the millionaire’s tax. The branding is smart. Nobody’s going to the mat for millionaires. You hear “millionaire’s tax” and you think, well, I don’t make a million dollars, I never will, pay up, you rich so-and-so.
But let’s be honest about what this actually is.
This is an income tax on every person in Washington. It just so happens that the first million dollars of your income is deductible.
For now.
The threshold is written into statute, not the state constitution. A future legislature can lower it with a simple majority vote. No ballot measure. No public debate. Just a majority vote by lawmakers.
New budget shortfall in the years ahead? Maybe that deduction drops to $500,000. Then $250,000.
And keep in mind, for married couples, this is combined income. Two working spouses with decent careers suddenly find themselves a lot closer to that threshold than they imagined. Think about a Seattle-area couple where one is a nurse and the other is an engineer. Combined, they might be pulling in $275,000 or $300,000 a year. That’s nowhere near a million dollars today. But if the legislature reduces the deduction to $250,000, that couple is now in the picture.
To be fair about how this works, they wouldn’t owe tax on their whole income — just dollars above $250,000. So, on a combined income of $275,000, they’re taxed on $25,000. At the bill’s current rate of 9.9%, that’s about $2,475 a year. Not ruinous. But the threshold doesn’t have to drop much further before it becomes a real number for many families. And every time it drops, more of your income becomes taxable.
Lawmakers were asked directly to include language in the bill to prevent it from happening. They refused.
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WA voters approved an income tax ban. Lawmakers are overturning it.
Look at the recent track record.
Two years ago, Initiative 2111, which bans state and local income taxes, gathered enough signatures to go before the legislature. Lawmakers approved it themselves, which at the time felt like a gesture of respect toward voters.
It wasn’t.
They are now overturning that ban to push the income tax through. Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, one of the architects of the income tax bill, actually called Initiative 2111 a “pie crust promise. Made to be broken.” He said that out loud. About a measure his own chamber approved.
Voters thought they had settled this. Pedersen just told you what he thought of that.
The bill blocks a referendum. Here’s what that means for you.
Lawmakers also added an anti-referendum clause to this bill. That means if it passes, you cannot gather signatures to send it to a referendum. The normal path is blocked. To fight it, opponents would need to run a full initiative campaign, gather twice as many signatures, and take on a heavier lift, all while the tax is already being collected.
Yes, a future initiative could eventually overturn it. But that takes time, money, and organization.
Lawmakers know that. They’re counting on it.
Washington’s tax structure is a real problem. This bill doesn’t fix it.
To be fair, Washington’s tax structure genuinely does hit lower-income families harder than almost any other state. That’s a real problem worth solving.
But here’s what this bill does not do. It does not get our spending under control. The state budget has more than doubled in a decade, not because of inflation, not because of population growth, but because we keep adding programs and none of them ever seem to go away.
We passed a $9 billion tax increase last year, and we are already back in a hole. The appetite for more spending does not stop. It never stops.
This bill feeds that appetite. The new tax would raise billions of dollars a year, with the income threshold almost certain to move lower whenever the majority decides the need is great enough.
And around here, the need is always great enough.
Washington voters have said no to this 10 times.
Lawmakers decided that for the 11th, they just wouldn’t ask.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
