While most of the attention on Mayor Katie Wilson's April 14 remarks at Seattle University went to the "bye" she waved at any millionaires who might leave the state, it was the first half of her sentence that stuck with me: "I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown." That line was not original to Wilson. Since I started at WPC in December, it has been the standard response from many Washington elected leaders whenever anyone raises concerns about capital flight: high earners will not leave and businesses will not move.
It is not just the mayor. State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, the architect of the income tax, told Fox 13 last week that "the millionaire tax is not likely to result in businesses leaving" and that he has "no indication" of any significant exodus. House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon made a similar argument during the House floor debate, saying he did "not believe that wealthy people and successful businesses move here because they want to live in a tax haven, they move here because the quality of life is high." During the 25-hour floor debate on the income tax, Democrat after Democrat repeated some version of the same claim.
So here is the honest question for Mayor Wilson, Sen. Pedersen, Rep. Fitzgibbon, and every lawmaker who voted for higher taxes: What evidence would actually convince you that you were wrong? We already have a mountain of evidence to the contrary, yet the line keeps being repeated.
The Office of Financial Management reports that net migration to Washington dropped by 7,500 people last year, and domestic in-migration is now running 18% below pre-pandemic levels. A Seattle Times analysis of Census data found Washington recorded net losses to 27 states while gaining residents from just 22. Idaho alone pulled in roughly 14,700 former Washington residents while sending back only about 7,500.
The IRS migration data show the same pattern in dollars. Washington lost more than $500 million in adjusted gross income to out-migration between 2022 and 2023, the same period in which the capital gains tax was being implemented. The National Taxpayers Union Foundation calculated at the end of 2025 that a taxpayer leaves Washington every 29 minutes and 55 seconds, while Florida gains a new resident every 2 minutes and 9 seconds and Texas every 2 minutes and 53 seconds. Those figures were measured before the income tax passed.
The business community is sending the same warning. The Association of Washington Business' (AWB) Spring 2026 Employers Survey found that 24% of Washington employers are now actively considering leaving the state. That was 17% in the previous quarter and roughly 8% in the winter 2025 survey. In other words, the share has nearly tripled in 16 months, tracking closely with the Legislature's tax agenda. Seventeen percent of respondents said they have already been contacted by out-of-state economic development officials recruiting them.
AWB President Kris Johnson called the findings "a 911 emergency" for the state's economy and warned lawmakers not to dismiss them: "It's tempting for lawmakers to dismiss this kind of report and to suggest that businesses won't really leave, but that would be a mistake. We are already seeing evidence of employer flight."
That warning is coming from individual business leaders, too. In March, senior tech leaders urged lawmakers to postpone the income tax vote, warning that it would make it harder for Washington to compete with California's stronger tech ecosystem and low-tax states like Texas. Microsoft President Brad Smith said during the 2025 wealth tax debate that such taxes would cause people to leave the state, undermine entrepreneurship, and discourage people from starting companies in Washington. In April 2025, 69 business leaders — including executives from Costco, Microsoft, Amazon, Nordstrom, Zillow, T-Mobile, and Alaska Airlines — sent a joint letter opposing payroll and wealth tax proposals and warning that further tax increases would threaten Washington's economic stability.
Then there are the departures themselves.
Jeff Bezos relocated to Florida in 2023, shortly after Washington's capital gains tax took effect. Fisher Investments moved its headquarters from Camas to Plano, Texas the same day the Washington Supreme Court upheld the tax. Its statement cited "the Washington State Supreme Court's wisdom and knowledge of the law, and in recognition of whatever it may do next."
Howard Schultz announced that he and his wife were moving to Miami the same day the House passed the income tax bill. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, Schultz wrote that Mayor Wilson "has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave" and that her "socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue."
Starbucks announced on April 22 that it will invest $100 million and bring 2,000 corporate jobs to Nashville, with five additional Seattle store closures coming on top of last year's Capitol Hill Reserve Roastery shutdown. In an interview with Fox 13, I estimated Washington could lose up to $750 million in tax revenue over the coming decades from the Nashville expansion alone.
Other examples are less nationally famous but just as telling. Zach Abraham, who runs Bulwark Capital Management with $1.1 billion in assets and was born and raised in Gig Harbor, told The Center Square he is moving his business out of state because the Legislature passed a tax that violates the state Constitution. "How can I trust anything?" he asked. "My business is, far and away, my largest asset."
Marc Barros, the Seattle-born CEO of Moment, announced in March that he was relocating the company to Wyoming after 40 years in Washington. He said the issue was not just the income tax, but the cumulative cost of doing business in the state. "I'm not even a millionaire affected by this tax," he wrote. "But when you add up all the costs to run a business in WA we can't afford it." He pointed specifically to the expanded digital advertising tax, which he said added $200,000 in annual costs overnight.
Leslie Goeres, founder of Renton-based Soak & Sage (named the Seattle Times' 2025 Best Day Spa in the Pacific Northwest) announced this month that her flagship expansion is going to Nashville, not Washington. The new 18,000-square-foot facility represents millions in investment and nearly 100 jobs. Goeres pointed directly to Washington's recent tax legislation and Seattle's regulatory environment as the reason the capital investment is going to Tennessee instead.
This is a visible pattern to people outside Washington as well. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has written about Washington's fiscal trajectory at least three times in the past five months, describing the state's direction as a "tax-and-spend ratchet" and warning that the new income tax will "inevitably capture the middle class." Liz Peek wrote in The Hill that the departure of Schultz and other wealthy residents from blue states is sending Democrats a clear warning: higher taxes can create a doom loop in which successful residents leave, revenues fall, and politicians respond by raising taxes again. Economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore warned that states adopting income taxes since 1960 have significantly underperformed the rest of the country in population, income, and state and local tax revenue.
Even Democratic leaders elsewhere seem to understand the risk. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has repeatedly refused to support a wealth tax, saying, "I don't want to lose any more people to Palm Beach." California Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed his own state's billionaire tax proposal. Democratic donor Nick Hanauer, one of Washington's wealthiest progressives and a longtime supporter of higher taxes on the rich, wrote recently in GeekWire that "virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to." He called it "a catastrophe."
Washington lawmakers understand the incentives, too, even when they pretend not to. In 2025, the Legislature raised the estate tax to 35%, the highest rate in the country. In 2026, lawmakers rolled it back to 20%. They did that for one reason: the higher rate was driving wealthy residents out of the state. They acknowledged the behavior they now claim does not exist.
The capital gains tax tells the same story. The tax raised $840 million in 2023. Collections then fell by more than 50% in 2024 despite a stock market that gained roughly 25% that year. Lawmakers can debate how much of that decline was driven by taxpayer behavior, timing, migration, or reduced realization of gains. What they cannot honestly do is pretend incentives are irrelevant.
So again: what would count as proof?
Would it take a specific net migration number? A particular level of lost adjusted gross income? A certain share of employers considering relocation? A defined number of headquarters moves? A sustained decline in capital gains collections? The mayor and her legislative allies have never said.
When Bezos left, the response was that he had personal reasons. When Schultz left, the response was that he was always going to leave. When Starbucks chose Nashville, Mayor Wilson declined to comment. When more than 100,000 Washingtonians signed in to oppose the income tax bill (more than any bill in state history), the committee chair called it "manipulation of our public comment system."
The data have been arriving for years from the state's own forecasting office, the IRS, major business associations, public tax receipts, relocation announcements, and the Legislature's own policy reversals. Washington Democrats are choosing not to see it because seeing it would require a different conversation about state spending, the conversation they have avoided throughout the decade that produced our budgetary mess.
If "bye" is the official response from the mayor of Seattle to the taxpayers who fund her city's services, voters should at least know that is the policy. And the next time the Legislature comes back to those same voters asking for more revenue to close the next deficit, they should remember who waved.