Opponents of Washington’s Millionaires Tax Submit Enough Signatures To Put Repeal Initiative on Ballot

Voters in Washington will likely get a chance to repeal a new income tax on high earners. In March, Washington’s Democratic governor, Bob Ferguson, signed SB 6346, which imposes a 9.9 percent tax on individuals or households with wage income of about $1 million a year. On Thursday, a political committee behind the push to repeal the tax, Let’s Go Washington, said it had received enough signatures to put its proposal to repeal the tax on the November ballot. In Washington, ballot measures need at least 309,000 valid signatures to make it on the ballot. Let’s Go Washington says it submitted more than 511,000 signatures.Speaking to supporters, the leader of Let’s Go Washington, Brian Heywood, said, “When you go out and you talk to over half a million people, you hear their voices, you hear what they’re saying.”“Number one is not one single person we talk to believes Olympia when they say this income tax is not coming to them. They know it’s coming for them,” Mr. Heywood added. The measure would also preserve the elimination of sales tax on diapers, personal care products, and over-the-counter drugs.The president of the Washington Education Association, Larry Delaney, released a video message criticizing the push to repeal the tax on high earners.Mr. Delaney called Mr. Heywood a “greedy hedge fund mogul” and said a repeal of the tax would “take money from our schools and send housing and healthcare costs skyrocketing. It would take away funding from child care, raise taxes on small businesses and working families, and eliminate universal school lunches.”If the repeal of the tax is approved, it is estimated that the state will lose $3 billion a year. While critics suggested that the state would have to implement new taxes or program cuts later to deal with a budget shortfall, Mr. Heywood told supporters there is “no reason to believe that [lawmakers] would use the money responsibly.”The process for certifying the ballot initiative is expected to take up to two weeks. The attorney general will draft a “public investment impact disclosure” statement that will describe the state services that would be impacted by the loss of revenue. The statement is legally required to be written using “neutral language that cannot reasonably be expected to create prejudice for or against the measure.”Business owners have also filed a lawsuit to challenge the tax. The complaint argues that the tax violates a 1933 state Supreme Court ruling, which determined that income is property and that it cannot be taxed at a rate of more than one percent.

Opponents of Washington’s Millionaires Tax Submit Enough Signatures To Put Repeal Initiative on Ballot

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