DHM finds 57% of Washington residents oppose repeal
Washington state voters will decide in November whether to repeal the state’s 9.9% income tax on earnings above $1 million, a measure signed into law by Governor Bob Ferguson in March and now facing a conservative-backed ballot initiative that advocates say could raise approximately $3.5 billion annually for education, healthcare, tax credits, and sales tax exemptions.
The vote places Washington among a growing group of states turning to high earners for revenue. Massachusetts, Maine, and New York already impose a unique tax rate on millionaires, and Hawaii passed a similar measure in May. California voters will separately decide on a proposed one-time, 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth. The California measure is opposed by most billionaires and by Governor Gavin Newsom, while some progressive groups have questioned its long-term benefits.
The Washington tax applies to roughly 20,000 of the state’s highest-earning households. Facing dwindling federal funds under the Trump administration, Washington lawmakers have looked to the state’s substantial tech-industry wealth — including prominent billionaires such as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and, until recently, Jeff Bezos — as a revenue source. Governor Ferguson has said he would veto any effort to extend the tax to lower-earning households.
The repeal effort is being led by Initiative 645, a proposal bankrolled primarily by Brian Heywood, a conservative hedge fund executive and the founder of the political action committee Let’s Go Washington. Heywood and his business moved from California to Washington state in 2010, drawn in part by the state’s lack of capital gains and income taxes. Since founding the PAC in 2022, Heywood has spent at least $11 million of his own money on 20 ballot proposals, including a failed 2024 campaign to repeal the state’s carbon market that was rejected by more than 60% of voters. The campaign opposing that effort was partially funded by Gates and Ballmer.
Heywood has argued the income tax could trigger an exodus of wealthy residents and compromise what he described as Washington’s “golden goose” economy, anchored by Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing. “I can’t tell you how many people have left the state,” Heywood said. “My business partner moved to Arizona. I probably know 50 people that are deca- or centi-millionaires that have left the state.” Academic research from Rian Watt of the Seattle-based Economic Opportunity Institute suggests about 2% of residents affected by the tax might leave Washington.
A separate campaign backing the repeal launched in July and selected former Republican congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler as its spokesperson. That campaign did not return requests for comment. State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, an architect of the millionaire tax, suggested that advocates of the repeal may “have figured out Brian Heywood” and may be “trying to distance themselves from his pretty toxic brand.” Heywood said Democratic lawmakers and the state’s election-finance watchdog have “try to make me toxic, somehow” in the eyes of donors.
Public disclosure records show those defending the tax have outspent Initiative 645’s supporters by more than 50%, with major labor unions contributing more than $6 million to the defense campaign. In September, several business owners in Washington faced public outcry and boycotts after disclosure forms revealed they had donated to Let’s Go Washington; the business owners said their support was limited to the millionaire tax repeal and not the PAC’s other initiatives.
The state also faces a separate legal challenge. The Washington State Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case early next year that will test the tax’s validity against state constitutional and legal precedent. Pedersen said Democratic lawmakers had “99.9% certainty” that conservative groups would mount a legal challenge.
Public opinion polling suggests the repeal is likely to fail. A DHM survey found 57% of Washington residents oppose repealing the tax, according to Kara Krnacik, who helped lead the poll. Krnacik said residents may be growing more receptive to a broader income tax: 41% of respondents said they favor an income tax that might eventually extend to households making $100,000 or more, up from 36% in November 2025.
If the tax is repealed, Pedersen said, lawmakers face a “very stark reality” and may have to pursue “inferior alternatives” such as raising the sales tax rate or enacting a statewide payroll tax. If the tax survives, he said, lawmakers may begin to reform other regressive taxes, including business taxes. “I think it’s really significant that you do not see almost any major business that is aligning itself with the initiative 645 folks,” Pedersen said.
The state’s tax structure has long drawn criticism. Emily Vyhnanek of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group, said Washington has “the second-worst tax code in the nation when it comes to who actually pays as a share of their income.” According to Vyhnanek, households in the lowest-earning quintile spend up to 13.8% of their annual income on state taxes, while those in the top 1% spend about 4%.
The current fight follows decades of voter-rejected efforts to reform Washington’s tax system, which historically has relied on sales, property, and other taxes rather than income tax. A 2002 state commission led by Bill Gates Sr. concluded that Washington’s tax code was uniquely regressive and called for a state-level income tax. Voters in 2010 rejected a proposed tax on households earning above $200,000 by wide margins, with then-Microsoft CEO Ballmer as the leading contributor to the opposition campaign and Bezos ranking fourth.
In 2021, lawmakers passed a 7% tax on capital gains above $250,000, which survived a constitutional challenge and a 2024 conservative-led ballot initiative aiming to overturn it. The initiative’s defeat was “some indication that voters were willing to vote for something that the opponents labeled as an income tax,” Pedersen said. By 2025, facing a projected $15 billion shortfall over four years, Democratic lawmakers landed on the high-earners income tax.
Let’s Go Washington is also backing two other ballot measures for November, including a proposal to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports at school that opponents have called “the most extreme proposal of its kind” for requiring “verification of biological sex” during sports physicals, potentially through genital exams. Heywood said he has begun to consider ways to circumscribe how unions receive and disburse funds in the state.