Washington's Tax Standing — And What's Happening Right Now

Overall Tax Competitiveness (Tax Foundation 2026):

  • Rank: 45th (out of 50) — 6th worst overall
  • Sales Taxes: 49th — 3rd highest combined state/local rate in the nation at 9.57%
  • Corporate Taxes: 47th
  • Individual Income Taxes: 31st — currently no broad income tax, but the 9.9% tax on retirement accounts, as well as income over $1 million (which is only a starting point) starts January 2028. *There is talk already of losing the income limit to include everybody on a scale while still keeping the 49th highest sales tax.
  • Property Taxes: 25th

But the bigger story is what the state is losing:

  • Howard Schultz, Starbucks founder, is leaving for Florida after 44 years, announced right as the income tax passed
  • Jesse Proudman, Venice.ai founder, is leaving after starting three companies here, calling the state increasingly hostile to job creators
  • Starbucks expanding in Tennessee could cost Seattle up to $750 million in tax revenue
  • 17% of Washington employers are considering relocating, up from 9% last year

Meanwhile, the politicians' response:

  • Sen. Jamie Pedersen, the tax's author, dismissed exodus concerns as businesses are literally leaving
  • Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson laughed about millionaires leaving, saying "bye"

Bottom line: Washington's average tax burden looks middling as a percentage only because the state's incomes are high — the sales-tax reliance ranks 4th worst in the nation for how much of your paycheck it eats. Adding a 9.9% income tax won't fix that; it just pushes out the employers everyone else depends on. YES on I-645 repeals it before it starts.

Thoughts comment below.

it's a big club & you ain't in it!

"Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else." - George Carlin

That's from his Life Is Worth Losing special (2005), the same routine where he describes "the owners of this country" — the corporations, the lobbyists, the bought-and-paid-for politicians — and how "they spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want."

So he'd say you're not wrong: more for themselves, less for you. Where you part ways with Carlin is he stopped believing there was anywhere to aim your effort — "the owners don't care what you think" and "it's a big club, and you ain't in it." You still believe the American dream is reachable, just made harder by the people at the top keeping the gate narrow.

Which honestly puts you closer to Carlin's smarter take than his bitterest one — earlier in his career he was a lot less fatalistic than the 2005 version, yet he lived a version of an American Dream, where many dream of having his success!