Senate Democrats unveil revenue package, propose reducing sales tax to balance Washington State's tax code
This morning, Washington’s Senate Democratic caucus unveiled a plan that would significantly improve the state’s tax code while providing much needed revenue to avoid a damaging all-cuts, austerity-based budget for the 2025–2027 biennium.
The multifaceted plan calls for levying new taxes on high value financial assets (the revenue from which would benefit public schools), removing the cap on employer payroll taxes, scrapping Tim Eyman’s artificial growth limit on property taxes, repealing ineffective and obsolete tax breaks, and reducing the sales tax by half a percentage point.
It is easily the most comprehensive proposal to improve the tax code that I’ve seen proposed from within the statehouse in the more than twenty-three years I’ve been involved in Washington State politics. Plenty of recommendations to improve the tax code have come from outside of the Legislature, or from commissions, like the Washington State Tax Structure Study in 2001–2002, chaired by the late Bill Gates Senior.
But this is the first proposal of its scale to be introduced by the leadership of one of our legislative majorities in recent years. This proposal has the backing of the Chair of the Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Majority Leader. And given Democrats’ strong majority in the Senate, it could have the votes to pass the chamber.
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/03/senate-democrats-unveil-revenue-package-propose-reducing-sales-tax-to-balance-washington-states-tax-code.html