In June, Seattle Times editorial page editor Kate Riley acknowledged that the paper had a problem. Readers agreed with the criticism of Olympia’s spending, then pointed out that the editorial board had endorsed the people responsible. “Ouch. That is true. Not proud of it,” she wrote. The board would take a harder look at incumbents’ votes, their willingness to defy their party, and their openness with voters. Riley even singled out the income tax as another attempt to finance spending that lawmakers refused to control.
Now the board wants voters to reject I-645 because it would repeal the newly passed state income tax while keeping the bill’s proposed tax relief. Lawmakers would have to fund that tax relief without the new revenue, and the board expects them to respond with worse taxes. “Wide Democratic majorities may make some budget cuts, but they will not produce the austerity budget Initiative 645’s supporters want,” it warns, predicting higher regressive taxes or a payroll tax instead. In other words, we are supposed to accept paying an income tax because the Legislature might punish us with a worse tax if we repeal it. The legislature’s out-of-control spending habits that supposedly embarrassed the board in June have become its excuse for preserving the new revenue.
This is a bizarre position for the Seattle Times to take, given that their editorial board has spent the year explaining why this tax approach fails. “There’s no amount of increased taxes that seem to satisfy the Democratic majority,” it wrote in January. In February, it demanded an overhaul of the tax code and warned against Democrats’ “insatiable urge to grow the state budget.” By March, it was criticizing Gov. Bob Ferguson for accepting the income tax without the additional sales and business tax relief he had sought. In April, it blamed overspending for the threat to Washington’s credit standing.
Yet when voters have a chance to make tax relief a priority by voting “Yes” on the initiative, the board suddenly accepts the Legislature’s spending preferences as something everyone else has to accommodate.
With an $80.2 billion, two-year budget for the state’s main operating funds, the question is what lawmakers are willing to put ahead of tax relief. Instead of asking them to defend those priorities, the board treats their refusal to change them as a reason to collect more money. If it believes other spending deserves priority over that relief, let it identify that spending and defend the choice. People are tired of hearing excuses to raise taxes because setting priorities is hard.
If the board is so certain those lawmakers will reach for more taxes, why does it ignore the risk of lowering the $1 million threshold? The deduction is written into ordinary state law, where a future Legislature can change it. Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen has said he supports a broader progressive income tax. The board itself warned in February that lawmakers were leaving the threshold unprotected: “In other words, there’s no protection.”
The editorial describes Washington’s existing tax mix as harmful to business growth, then points out that 41 other states have income taxes. What does the tax climate in other states tell us about the combined burden here? The broader sales tax cut the board wanted failed in the House. Washington would be keeping its existing taxes and adding another, with relief the board itself considers inadequate.
To soften concerns about people leaving, the board cites Cornell sociologist Cristobal Young’s estimate of a 1.9% loss among roughly 25,000 high earners in Washington state. That works out to roughly 475 fewer taxpayer households.
In their 2024 study of California’s 2012 increase, Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu estimated that migration and changes in reported income eroded 45.2% of the additional revenue the increase would otherwise have generated in its first year, and 60.9% within two years. Most of that erosion came from people who stayed. Those figures apply to California, but they show how much a simple head count can miss. For a board so worried about paying the bills, skipping these revenue questions is a significant omission.
Even the polling the board cites comes with an omission. The poll shows 61% support for a tax on incomes above $1 million, including 54% among Republicans. In the same DHM survey, support fell to 36% when respondents were asked about expanding it to incomes of $100,000 or more. The board chooses to ignore this part of the survey, as well as its own earlier warnings about how easily lawmakers can change the threshold.
The board concludes by urging lawmakers to just improve the income tax law. These are the same lawmakers who, as the board well knows, already rejected broader tax relief in the passage of the bill. Meanwhile, the Legislature’s refusal to restrain spending is supposed to scare us out of repealing the tax. Voters should have no patience for this hypocrisy.
The Seattle Times editorial board promised readers a harder look at the people responsible for these out-of-control budgets. It has spent months blaming lawmakers for spending beyond the state’s means. Now the Legislature’s refusal to change is the board’s excuse for protecting another tax. If the board is serious about its own budget concerns, it should have urged voters to vote “Yes” on I-645, repeal the income tax, and bring lawmakers back to the table. Lawmakers should be pushed to defend their spending priorities and find room for tax relief in the vast amounts of money the state already collects.