Washington Just Passed a 9.9% “Millionaires Tax” — And It Could Change Everything

passed a tax today, and I'm going to go live to talk about it right now. This is part of why I left Washington State, but I don't think people realize what this actually would mean if it goes into effect. So first of all, what are the details of this Washington State tax, the Millionaires Tax? Any household that makes over $1 million— to blanket, any household that makes over $1 million adjusted gross income— uh, we're going to tax an additional 10%. Uh, if you're not good at math, that's $100,000 just for making a million dollars. Now, a lot of people would say like, oh well, they made a million dollars, they can afford it. As someone who has literally had to make over a million dollars to pay for previous business transactions and mistakes, I have, uh, I can't imagine having to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars of it. That would have literally bankrupted me. Like, I, I could not have employed the people that I employed if I had that tax. I could not have bought the real estate that I did. I couldn't have bought the resorts I did. I couldn't have run the property management company. This is horrendous. More importantly, Washington State, we're talking about the state that has Microsoft founder, uh, Amazon was founded here, Starbucks, a lot of your big name massive companies, and there's a ton of them. They're started by people who, yes, have a lot of money, and it's a state with an already ludicrously high cost of living. It's already one of the most expensive states to live in in the entire country, and they're now saying, hey, if you are a job provider or you want to put a big company here— so basically tech, which Seattle is known for— uh, we don't want you anymore. You can go ahead and leave. That is without a doubt the most insane thing that I have seen Washington do yet. Now, there's a few little problems. One, it passed the House. It still has to pass the Senate, but they're going to try to sign this into law. It is also against the state constitution, so expect a ton of lawsuits, and this should probably get reversed. That being said, Washington is one of 9 states where we have very high gas taxes. We have very high sales tax. We have taxes on just about everything. Except in our Constitution, we cannot have a statewide income tax. They're trying to push this through as like, well, it's only a tax on the millionaires, but there's no guardrails on this. A few years, they can change it to any household that makes over $500,000. What happens when governments do this is it becomes a money grab. There's never enough money. They also sunset a whole bunch of systems, uh, like Running Start programs where kids can get an early start in college in that state, you know. My wife actually got to take advantage of that program. They're just getting rid of a whole bunch of state programs because they need more money for their new programs. So instead of Running Start, we're going to feed all kids free lunch. So we're going to literally try to take as much money as we can from the people who provide jobs, pushing them out of states. We're going to get less jobs, which is going to lower state income because we're going to drive out a lot of tech jobs. So we're going to pay everyone less, but We're going to take more money from you and we're going to give it so that your kids can have free food while they're at school. Now we are going to be reducing their education and some of their upside and Running Start to get them through, or, uh, Running Start to college, which also saves on college funds a bunch. If this goes through and is upheld, education will go down, jobs will go down. Income will go down. Tech will leave to the other markets it's already fleeing to. And Dallas, Texas, and Miami, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona are going to continue to just get the flood of people who are job creators or entrepreneurs are going to continue to leave the state. I left the state before they put this together because of their taxes and their ridiculous laws. This is one of the worst ones we've seen though. I cannot imagine being someone who makes, you know, say like a million and a half dollars. Wanting to pay an extra $150,000 on top of all of the taxes that we already pay as business owners. I have resort fees, I have property management tax, I have payroll tax, I have L&I. Can you imagine also just paying a bonus 10% above and beyond the high sales tax and your federal income tax going to the state? By the way, the state charges me on top of all of those taxes for running a resort, I also pay a 10% transient rental tax because people are staying there for less than 1 month. It's a short-term rental, of course it is, it's a hotel. Bonus 10% tax. Oh, but if you make too much money running the resort, we're going to take another 10% from you personally on the back end. So I'll pay my property tax, I'll pay my federal tax, I'll pay L&I, I'll pay employee taxes, I'll pay 10% just for being a hotel and for no other reason. And then if I do well and provide enough jobs, you'll take 10% of any money that I have left over to pay myself. The most insane thing I've ever seen. But again, we don't expect it to be upheld. It is like blatantly against the state's constitution. Uh, but Seattle is absolutely crazy. I witnessed a lot of wild things while I was in Seattle, uh, politically, which caused me to leave. But as a job creator or any job creator in that state, if you want to make any money or provide significant jobs to anyone, uh, you better be just a nonprofit that doesn't pay yourself, or you can go live literally anywhere else. So we'll see what happens, but, uh, look for housing prices to expand everywhere else but Washington. This one is going to hurt.