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washington state
'Inspiring': Washington Enacts Millionaires' Tax to Help Working Families
The head of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy praised state policymakers for "listening to the demands of the people to create a less regressive state tax system."
Mar 30, 2026
While nearby California prepares for a November vote to tax the ultrarich, Democratic Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Monday signed state legislation that creates a tax on income over $1 million in a single year.
"Adoption of the historic Millionaires' Tax makes our tax system more fair, and means free meals for K-12 students, the largest tax break in state history for small businesses, eliminating the sales tax for baby diapers, and sending a check to nearly 500,000 working families to make life more affordable," Ferguson highlighted in a statement.
Senate Bill 6346, sponsored by state Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43), was delivered to the governor earlier this month after passing the upper chamber 27-21. In the Washington House of Representatives, where the companion bill was led by Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D-34), it was approved 51-46.
"With this bill, we're going to begin to right a historic wrong that has plagued our state for nearly 100 years, and made our tax system one of the worst and most regressive in the entire country," said Pedersen. "We've asked Washington's working families for far too long to shoulder far too much of the tax burden for the things we care about, and we have not asked enough of our wealthiest neighbors. The Millionaires' Tax represents hope and change for people in communities like mine, and across the state."
Bloomberg reported Monday that before adopting the law, which "applies a 9.9% levy on the roughly 30,000 taxpayers in the state who make more than $1 million a year," Washington was one of just nine states without an income tax
Washington lawmakers previously "made progress in recent years by creating and later enhancing their capital gains excise tax," but its "tax structure has been woefully unequal, ranking as the second-most regressive state and local tax system in the country," according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
"Inequality is at a historic high and billionaires are walking away with ever-larger shares of our country’s collective wealth," ITEP executive director Amy Hanauer said in a Monday statement. "With those in charge at the federal level passing policies that only make this worse, it is incumbent upon states to come up with solutions. It is inspiring to see Washington listening to the demands of the people to create a less regressive state tax system."
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson has officially signed into law a new tax on millionaires.The 9.9% tax on income above $1 million is projected to raise up to $3 billion in 2029 after it takes effect in 2028.That money will go towards public education, child care, and expanding the state's EITC.
— ITEP (@itep.org) March 30, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Last year, congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump used the GOP's narrow majorities to pass a budget package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that provided the rich with more tax breaks while slashing programs for working families, such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Ferguson signed Washington's bill as Republicans in Congress prepare for this year's budget package, which they aim to pass ahead of the November midterm elections, and other states and localities consider measures to tax the rich and use the revenue to better serve the working class.
As historian Lawrence Wittner detailed in an opinion piece for Common Dreams last week, "Campaigns for state tax-the-rich legislation are flourishing in California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, and Virginia, and have already succeeded in getting such legislation adopted in Massachusetts and Washington."
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) headed to New York City on Sunday to boost an effort by NYC's newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to pressure Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on the rich. He addressed a rally at Lehman College in the Bronx.
"The people of the city, the people of this state, the people of this country, they do not want to see our kids go hungry," Sanders said. "They do not want people to sleep out on the street or lack healthcare. They want the very rich to start paying their fair share of taxes."
At the federal level, Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) earlier this month introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act. They were followed last week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), lead sponsors of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act. However, neither bill is expected to get through the current Congress.
Washington makes history today! Gov. Bob Ferguson just signed the Millionaires Tax into law!For too long, the wealthiest few have paid a smaller share while working families carried the load.
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— Washington State Democrats (@wadems.org) March 30, 2026 at 1:28 PM
Like in Washington, DC, efforts to tax the rich are still facing pushback in Washington state. After Ferguson's signature, Citizen Action Defense Fund announced its intention to sue, with executive director Jackson Maynard declaring that "since lawmakers and the governor have chosen to ignore both the constitution and decades of settled case law, we will act."
According to KUOW, during the bill signing event in Olympia that featured remarks from not only the governor but also the bill sponsors, a small business owner, and a tech executive, Ferguson acknowledged that "there's going to be a public conversation around this in the days and weeks and months ahead, as there should be of something of this historic nature."
"Putting front and center those perspectives you just heard, I think, will be critical," he asserted, "because when Washingtonians hear the benefits that flow to working families, to businesses large and small, to kids in schools with those free meals, for childcare services for thousands of Washington families, it's going to make a huge, huge difference."
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'I Am Simply Outraged': Despite 8-Day Notice, Jayapal Blocked From Oversight Visit at ICE Detention Center
"This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide."
Feb 20, 2026
Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday expressed fury at the Trump administration after she was prohibited from conducting oversight at a immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington despite giving the facility the required eight days notice prior to her visit.
In a statement posted on social media, Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that officials at the the Northwest Detention Center blocked her from meeting with people being held at the facility, even in cases where she had obtained privacy release forms.
Jayapal said that she refused to leave the facility until she could meet with "one of the individuals for whom I had a privacy waver... and whose attorney was there waiting for me to meet with them."
The Washington Democrat was told that she could meet with this person, but only in a public visitation area instead of a private attorney room.
After agreeing to the detention center's terms, Jayapal got to meet with the detainee, whom she described as "the sole caregiver for his 8-year-old US citizen daughter" who also has "serious medical issues himself."
"He has been hospitalized in the emergency room three times since being detained on January 11," Jayapal continued, "and is still experiencing serious pain and medical issues for his condition which are not yet resolved."
Jayapal said that she spoke with several immigration attorneys who were at the facility, who told her that they were often made to wait up to five hours to see their clients, as there are just seven attorney rooms available for a detention center that holds roughly 1,300 people.
Jayapal said she also heard complaints from people at the facility about "inadequate medical treatment, overcrowding, and inedible food," and then lashed out at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for impeding members of Congress from conducting proper oversight of its detention centers.
"I am simply outraged that [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem's DHS continues to try and block me and other members of Congress from speaking with detained people and conducting meaningful oversight," she said. "This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide as they incarcerate around 70,000 people every night."
DHS has consistently denied congressional Democrats access to immigration detention centers since Trump returned to the White House last year, even though federal laws such as Section 527 of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act state that members of the legislative branch are allowed to conduct "robust and effective oversight" of such facilities.
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Washington Homeowners Sue Big Oil Over Soaring Insurance Costs
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer."
Nov 26, 2025
Efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the climate emergency continued in Washington state this week as homeowners sued oil giants and a trade association over their decades of lies and rising insurance premium rates.
"As natural disasters become more costly, homeowners foot the bill," explains the complaint, filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington against the American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell and its subsidiary Equilon Enterprises.
"In 2023, a significant number of natural catastrophes... impacted the United States, at an estimated cost of $114 billion, of which approximately $80 billion was insured," the filing notes. "In the state of Washington alone, homeowners' rates have increased by a total of 51% over the past six years. But climate change has driven insurance premium increases throughout the country because insurance generally operates by pooling risks."
There are two named plaintiffs in the proposed class action suit. Margaret Hazard lives in Carson, an "area that is very dry and prone to forest fires." Since she began paying for home insurance in 2017, her premiums have doubled, and she recently had to switch to a policy with less coverage. Richard Kennedy of Normandy Park has also paid for homeowner's insurance since then; his premiums have gone from $1,012.10 to $2,149.18, an increase of nearly 113%.
"This case is about holding the fossil fuel defendants accountable for the increased homeowners' insurance premiums that their coordinated and deliberate scheme to hide the truth about climate change and the effects of burning fossil fuels has brought about and for their conduct contributing to climate change; a cost the highly profitable trillion-dollar industry can easily afford, and one that it should not be permitted to simply pass along to the everyday people who are presently bearing the burden of these increased premiums," the complaint states.
The document highlights that "defendants have known since at least the 1960s, based on their own internal scientific research, that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution caused by the unchecked sales of its highly profitable petroleum products would inevitably lead to 'catastrophic' weather-related consequences with 'considerable significance to civilization' and that only a narrow window of time existed in which to act before severe consequences would result."
Big Oil "took this internal calculus seriously," the filing details, but "rather than inform the public, or... undertake meaningful remedial steps, defendants chose instead to protect their profits by engaging in a massive, deliberate, decadeslong misinformation campaign intended to sow doubt in the minds of the media [and] business leaders, and deceive the public and consumers about the conclusions they themselves had reached about the substantial consequences that the sale of their products would have."
As journalists and academic researchers have revealed what fossil fuel companies knew, and when, over the past decade—while extreme weather, from rapidly intensifying hurricanes to historic wildfires, ravaged US communities—various climate liability lawsuits have been filed across the country by states, municipalities, tribes, and individuals.
According to the Center for Climate Integrity's national tracker, in Washington state alone, there are at least three other cases: two brought by tribes in December 2023 and a wrongful death suit filed in May by the daughter of Juliana Leon, who died during the extreme heatwave that plagued the Pacific Northwest in 2021.
The cases have often drawn comparisons to the tobacco industry's deception, and the one filed this week is no exception. In fact, the plaintiffs for the new federal suit in Washington are represented by the law firm Hagens Berman, whose managing partner and cofounder, Steve Berman, served as special assistant attorney general for 13 states against Big Tobacco.
"Big Oil took its playbook directly from the minds of Big Tobacco and think they can get away with the same deliberate disinformation campaign, coercing the public to pay for the very harms they suffer," Berman said in a statement. "We see a direct correlation between Big Oil's lies and the alarming increase of homeowners insurance due to the rising threat of natural disasters."
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