“What I am is the center of the resistance,” Brian Heywood said in an interview in early April. He is a prominent businessman and the founder of Let’s Go Washington, a direct democracy group. It creates petitions and gathers signatures to put issues on the ballot for a direct vote by Evergreen State residents.
One of the things Heywood is figuring out how to resist, this time, is a newly passed Washington state tax that Democrats in the state legislature have dubbed the millionaires tax. “In the simplest terms … [it] is a 9.9% tax on households earning over $1 million per year,” the state Senate Democrats explained in a fact sheet. It would go into effect in 2028 and be collected in 2029.
Washington state businesses are, on the whole, opposed to such a tax. So are most of the people who bothered to express an opinion to the legislature. More than 100,000 people registered objections to the bill electronically while it was being debated in this year’s session, likely a record. (The only point of contention is how many bots entered the fray.)
Olympia’s Democrats, who control 30 of the 49 state Senate seats and 59 of the 98 state House seats, were not moved by the opposition. They passed an income tax on high earners and made it harder to oppose by adding a necessity clause.
Without that clause, it would take fewer signatures to qualify a referendum for the ballot, and the Democratic-held state attorney general’s office would not be able to write a confusing ballot title or include a fiscal impact statement emphasizing what a “no” vote would cost. With an initiative to the people, both of these are hurdles to overcome.
Let’s Go Washington tried to submit its objection as a referendum anyway, and the Democratic-controlled state Office of the Secretary of State rejected it.
“Now we’re going to sue them,” Heywood told the Washington Examiner, and his group proceeded to do so.
There are multiple legal issues to resolve about the legislation. These include whether it conflicts with the Washington State Constitution, which stipulates that all income must be taxed at a uniform rate. And whether the ruling party in the legislature can invoke the necessity clause whenever its members don’t feel like facing a referendum.
Nevertheless, there is a high likelihood that a breakneck drive to gather several hundred thousand signatures in short order will be undertaken. If successful, the issue will then be decided by voters in November. “It’s 100 percent possible to put something on the ballot this year,” Heywood insisted.
California and Hawaii weigh in
Washington is one of at least three Democratic-dominated states this year that have devoted considerable effort to raising taxes on the wealthy. California is currently consumed with a signature drive to hit the state’s billionaires with a wealth tax that would take 5% of their wealth in one go.
As written by the United Healthcare Workers, an arm of the SEIU, the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act is retroactive to the beginning of this year. People couldn’t easily avoid the penalty by moving out of state. This fact led a huge number of the state’s billionaires to move their residences last year. More are threatening to go if California voters pass it.
An analysis of the measure by economists Joshua Rauh, Benjamin Jaros, Gregory Kearney, John Doran, and Matheus Cosso for the Hoover Institution found that the billionaire flight that has already occurred from the Golden State is significant. “Nearly 30% of the Act’s wealth tax base has already departed: Publicly confirmed departures eliminated over $550 billion from the tax base before a single signature was collected,” they wrote.
The Hoover economists’ current estimates predict a negative fiscal impact for the initiative of minus $24.7 billion. Regardless of the specific amount, they have a reasonably high degree of certainty for a negative fiscal outcome. “Across 100,000 simulated parameter combinations, 71% of scenarios yield a negative net present value,” they wrote.
Less attention is being paid to Hawaii, whose legislature had delivered significant income tax relief in 2024. Now, Democratic Gov. Josh Green and some legislators want to reverse those tax cuts to varying degrees.
One proposal, state House Bill 2306, would “actually increase Hawaii’s top marginal income tax rate, sending a strong message that Hawaii is not business-friendly, and that could have repercussions throughout the economy, affecting the job market,” Joe Kent, executive vice president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, told the Washington Examiner.
No slam dunks
Yet it’s not a slam dunk that the California or Hawaii proposals will ever become law (or that Washington’s will survive a challenge at the ballot box. Voters have repeatedly rejected an income tax when given the chance). Both are currently facing significant pushback by the business community.
In California, for instance, several billionaires, who are still residents, decided two could play at this game and funded signature drives for a raft of counterproposals to be put on the ballot in November. The substance of them is not as important as the fact that this gambit managed to bid up the price of collecting every individual signature significantly from roughly $5 to $15 per.
California billionaires also locked up a lot of the signature-gathering talent in the state, making the union’s job that much harder. “A lot of petitioners, including myself, are gonna walk away from this season with over $75,000,” one signature gatherer bragged to the San Francisco Standard. “Some people will probably make over $100,000.”
In the Hawaiian legislature’s current session, there is also a counterproposal, state Senate Bill 3125, which Kent calls the “not as bad” bill, since it would preserve at least 95% of the tax relief for most residents and ensure that families still receive the cost-of-living relief they were promised.
Though it wouldn’t be his preference, Kent says that the state Senate proposal “strikes a better balance between maintaining tax relief and addressing the state’s fiscal concerns, rather than broadly rolling back the cuts.”
Kent noted that as yet there hadn’t “been any movement on the proposals since they crossed over” from one chamber to the other.
“The key deadline is Second Decking on April 10. If the bills don’t receive a hearing by then, they are effectively dead for the session,” he said. “If they do advance, the real decisions will likely come during conference committee between April 16 and May 1, when lawmakers reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions.
Democrats hold an overwhelming majority in the Hawaiian legislature, with 22 of 25 seats in the state Senate and 40 of 51 seats in the state House, but they tend to be a somewhat more eclectic lot than their counterparts on the mainland.
Yet, even within that solid majority, discontent within the party looks to be growing. And the push to take back the tax relief that the legislature voted for Hawaiians likely isn’t helping.
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“I stand before you here today to officially announce my resignation from the Democratic Party and to join the Republican Party, so it’s official. Can’t take it back,” state Rep. Elle Cochran, whose district is in West Maui, announced at a press conference in mid-March that was covered by the Honolulu Civil Beat’s Sunshine Blog.
Cochran said that she looked forward to the day “when there is balance in government, when different perspectives are welcomed, and ideas are debated openly for the good of the people.”
Jeremy Lott (@jeremylottdiary) is the author of several books, most recently The Three Feral Pigs and the Vegan Wolf.
