Washington residents don’t mind taxing the ultra wealthy, according to a new statewide poll.
State lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 5486 last year, which would create a tailored property tax on financial assets collectively valued over $250 million.
The legislation hasn’t made it past the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Any assets under that $250 million threshold would be exempt from the tax.
But the idea to boost state funding of K-12 education by adding this tax is popular among Washington voters. Of those who responded to the poll, 66% said they’d support the tax and less than 20% said they’d oppose it.
Support for a wealth tax bridges party divides as well, the poll shows. “Very liberal” voters overwhelmingly approve of it and, while the margin of support shrinks among Republican voters, more respondents who said they were “very conservative” support the tax than don’t.
But Washington’s voters are fickle.
While they support a wealth tax, they also want lawmakers to look for education funding by trimming other parts of the state budget. When asked whether they’d prefer the state to find the money by cutting other parts of the budget, add new or increased taxes, or a combination of both, 44% said they’d prefer cuts. About 44% also said they’d want a combination.
That trepidation over increased taxes could be explained by other responses in the poll. About 67% of respondents said the state government wastes some or a lot of tax dollars. Less than a quarter said the state was responsible with the money.
Broad support for new ‘wealth tax’
Washington doesn’t have a wealth tax, but another tax suggests most of the state wouldn’t be affected if it were enacted.
Of the almost 8 million Washington residents, roughly 3,000 filed last year for the capital gains tax. It’s a 7% tax on the profit of capital asset sales that exceed $250,000. It includes the sales of stocks and bonds but excludes property sales.
The state does have several billionaires who the tax would affect, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, philanthropist and Pivotal Ventures founder Melinda French Gates, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott, Microsoft Office creator Charles Simonyi, Valve founder Gabe Newell and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.
Gates and Ballmer are among the top 15-richest people in the world.
Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person according to Forbes, would escape a proposed wealth tax thanks to his move to Miami. The Amazon founder was the richest person in Washington since 2017.
