On October 8, former congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler and April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, will meet in a televised debate over Initiative 645 — a proposal to repeal the state’s new 9.9% tax on annual income above $1 million. The vote will take place Nov. 3, but the debate is already about more than the tax rate: voters will decide whether the state can make the income of its wealthiest residents part of its tax base for the first time in decades — and what will happen to promised tax breaks and public programs if the experiment is halted before it begins.
Gov. Bob Ferguson signed ESSB 6346 into law on March 30, 2026. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2028, and applies to income earned during that same calendar year; the first returns and payments will be due in April 2029. The tax does not apply to the first $1 million, but to income above that amount: the 9.9% rate applies to what is known as Washington adjusted taxable income. Lawmakers estimate that roughly half a percent of the state’s households will be affected.
The label “millionaires tax” is convenient for political campaigns, but it somewhat obscures the legal structure. This is not a tax on the value of a home, an investment portfolio or accumulated wealth. The law targets annual income; the tax base excludes, among other things, sales of residential real estate and certain legally defined sales of qualifying family-owned small businesses. In a state that has never imposed a broad personal income tax, that distinction carries almost symbolic significance.
The figures in the Department of Revenue’s financial projections are substantial: gross revenue from the tax is estimated at about $3.7 billion in fiscal year 2030. But that does not mean all of the money will immediately go toward new spending in Olympia. The law also expands the Working Families Tax Credit for low-income workers, increases B&O tax relief for small businesses, and repeals or reduces certain sales taxes, including taxes on a range of essential goods. Under Ferguson administration estimates, a significant share of the new revenue is expected to flow back to families and small businesses through those measures.
Initiative 645, promoted by the Let’s Go Washington group, frames the question more simply: repeal the new tax before a single dollar is collected. Supporters point to the risk to business owners, investors and highly paid professionals who, they argue, could shift their income — and sometimes their residence — to other states. The campaign is backed by the Let’s Go Washington political network, which has previously placed initiatives on the ballot targeting the state’s climate program, capital-gains tax and WA Cares long-term-care program.
Opponents of the initiative respond that Washington relies especially heavily on consumption taxes, which take a comparatively larger share of income from poor and middle-class residents than from the wealthy. Sims will argue from that perspective: a tax affecting a small group of the most affluent residents should support schools, health and social programs, colleges and tax refunds for working families. In the official statement voters will see, the consequences of repeal are spelled out plainly: it would reduce funding for public K-12 education, higher education and social services, particularly health care.
There is, however, an important legislative detail. The 2026 package was written as a unified reform: if the key section imposing the new tax is repealed or ultimately struck down by a court, many of the related tax credits and exemptions will also expire. So the November vote is not quite a choice between a new tax and keeping all the promised relief measures already in place. Rather, it is a decision about whether to preserve the entire mechanism, in which revenue from affluent taxpayers and benefits for other groups were designed as interdependent components.
The law also remains under a constitutional cloud. A lawsuit filed in Klickitat County Superior Court relies on the Washington Supreme Court’s 1933 decision in Culliton v. Chase: the court then classified income as property, while Washington’s constitution requires property to be taxed uniformly. Supporters of the new law hope the current Supreme Court will reconsider that nearly century-old approach; opponents view it as an insurmountable barrier to a progressive income tax. A separate lawsuit concerned the wording of the fiscal explanation in the voters’ pamphlet: activist Arthur West sought to remove it, but the state Supreme Court split evenly in early September — four votes to four — and did not issue an emergency injunction.
The Oct. 8 debate, moderated by Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times and Joyce Taylor of KING 5, will take place without an audience in the studio and will air at 8 p.m. on KONG-TV, as well as in the organizers’ digital broadcasts. There is little time left before Election Day, but Initiative 645 already has a rare quality: it presents Washington residents with an economic, legal and moral question all at once — who should pay for a state that wants to be both wealthier and fairer.
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