An effort to repeal Washington state’s first income tax on high earners took a major step forward on Thursday.
Brian Heywood, a wealthy hedge fund founder, and his conservative political action group, Let’s Go Washington, rallied outside the secretary of state’s office, unloading cardboard boxes full of signatures supporting the repeal. Workers in the secretary of state’s office will now verify the half-million signatures before the measure qualifies for a spot on November ballots.
Officials say it will take two weeks to verify the signatures once they’ve been submitted.
Let’s Go Washington has been lobbying support for its repeal effort since May and has collected far more than the 300,000 signatures required to put an initiative to voters. While the group has successfully gathered signatures for several initiatives in recent years, this new tax repeal effort garnered a record amount of signatures in the shortest amount of time yet, said Hallie Herzberg, director of communications for Let’s Go Washington.
The tax in question, which Democrats call the “millionaires tax,” passed the Legislature in March and would take a 9.9% cut of annual household income over $1 million. It is expected to bring in about $3 billion a year. The state will start collecting that revenue in 2029, directing it toward a state budget that’s in the red by billions of dollars. It would also fund child care subsidies, tax breaks for low-income families, and sales tax breaks on certain personal hygiene products.
Advocates of this measure — including Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat — have said this tax could level the playing field in a state where the poorest residents shoulder the heaviest proportional tax burden. Republicans say the tax is unconstitutional and that this legislation opens the door to an income tax on lower earning people as well.
Despite the relative speed with which initiative campaigners collected signatures for a repeal of the millionaires tax, their effort faces a bigger challenge at the ballot box.
Recent polling shows that only a minority of state voters would choose to overturn the tax if the question were to appear on ballots. Research that Democratic polling firm GBAO published at the end of June shows Heywood’s initiative losing by 19 points, with 38% in favor of repealing the tax and 57% opposed.
“[The repeal measure] is sloppily written and fiscally irresponsible, and this new polling shows that voters aren’t impressed,” said Erik Houser, spokesperson for the coalition to save the millionaires tax.
Let’s Go Washington did not directly address questions about the new poll results.
A lawsuit filed by former Attorney General Rob McKenna is challenging the constitutionality of the tax and is expected to work its way to the state Supreme Court in the next year.
