Tax-The-Rich Mayor Wants To Hike Sales Tax For Transit

Mayor Katie Wilson announced a proposal Tuesday to hike up Seattle's sales tax, already among the highest in the country, to pay for more frequent bus service in the renewal of the Seattle Transit Measure. 

While the initiative funds a vital public good, the move toward regressive taxation may for some complicate the populist image Wilson used to defeat her corporate-backed predecessor. Transit advocates in support of Wilson’s proposal are willing to excuse the sales tax hike because the City has few revenue-generating alternatives and the benefits to riders seem to offset the tax cost. Others are firm that Wilson should have taken the political risk of funding the measure with a tax on car tabs, which are generally considered less regressive than a flat sales tax. Either way, if Wilson is serious about a broader goal to rebalance our regressive tax code, she can still prove it in her upcoming budget proposal by taxing the rich with even more enthusiasm. 

In 2020, Seattle voters overwhelmingly backed a six-year funding package known as the Seattle Transit Measure or Seattle Transportation Benefit District. That measure established a 0.15% sales tax to bolster the city’s primary transit corridors, purchasing additional service from King County and Sound Transit. 

Wilson announced her renewal plan, which will fund 280,000 bus trips a year and 22,000 free ORCA transit passes for low-income Seattleites over the next ten years. The City will pay the $138 million price tag by doubling that 0.15% rate to 0.3%. That would put the City’s cumulative sales tax at 10.7%. 

Seattleites are all too familiar with the City’s high sales tax burden. A 2024 report found that Seattle holds the unfortunate title for highest combined state and local sales tax rate in the country. And local tax-the-rich advocates won’t let anyone forget that sales tax disproportionately burdens low income people and reliance on such a tax, as well as flat property tax, is why Washington has the second most regressive tax code in the country. Boo!

Wilson told press at her announcement Tuesday that it is “unfortunate” that under state law, the City has “very limited,” progressive funding options for their Transportation Benefit District. She added that’s “something we can continue to work at at the State level.” 

While the tax does not work toward a grander goal of rebalancing the tax code, progressive transit advocates argue that the proposal overall increases affordability. 

According to the Mayor’s press release, the 0.3% addition to the sales tax will cost the median two-person Seattle household about $58 a year, up from the $29 the current rate costs. To put that in perspective, Transit Riders Union (TRU) member Noah Williams said that “pays for itself” so to speak, by replacing one rideshare to the airport with public transit. 

Wilson argued that making it easier to get around town without a car is “real affordability.”

“Transportation is one of the biggest costs in a household budget, and most of that cost comes from owning a car,” Wilson said at her press conference. “Gas, insurance, repairs, parking, monthly payments, and maintenance all add up fast, so when we make our transit system better, we make it possible for more households to live car-free or car-light, and that could put hundreds or thousands of dollars back into a family’s budget.”

And let’s level for a sec, this is a much better cause than the sales tax to fund police alternatives rather than chipping away at Seattle police Department. Even progressives approved that measure.

Still, Wilson had at least one other option. She could have proposed a car tab fee of up to $60. That would also be definitionally regressive — the fee would be flat and in a still car-dependent city, it’s not just the wealthy driving — but to some it may feel spiritually less regressive than a tax on even more basic human needs.

Wilson told reporters that “just to be blunt” pursuing a car tab fee would be a lot more “controversial,” a compliment to her political foes’ organizing prowess and, more disappointingly, an admission to her own lack of political courage. 

Wilson ran in 2025 as a foil to corporatist, status-quo politician Bruce Harrell, lapping up over generous comparisons between her and then- New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. But so far, the lefty movements she sprung from have noticed a seeming lack of political courage. She’s cut concessions to the cops on cameras, she’s backpedaled her boycott call at the behest of big business, and now, before proposing any taxes on corporations or the ultra wealthy, she’s pushed two regressive taxes with the armor of really good, popular causes the levy to pay for the library and the sales tax to pay for transit. 

TRU member Harper Nalley told The Burner she does not think this is cause for progressives to panic that Wilson is abandoning her tax-the-rich platform. For one, the library levy and the Seattle Transit Measure are both pre-existing measures crossing her desk on a schedule with the regressive system backed in thanks to State lawmakers. Wilson said the sales tax would not be her choice if she built the system from scratch.

Plus, Williams from TRU also argued that avoiding the car tabs fight does not make Wilson a coward — improved transit is too important to risk when there’s an option on the table that’s basically guaranteed to pass. 

Wilson’s best opportunity to pursue new progressive revenue will come with her upcoming budget proposal. At a town hall earlier this spring where she faced a room full of lefty critics, she said her office is still working on progressive revenue streams to propose at that time, though those options are, again, limited by State law. In any case, when that proposal goes public, voters can better assess Wilson’s dedication to a fairer tax code. If hikes JumpStart more than she hiked sales tax, then we can chalk up any perception that she's regressive-revenue-happy to unfortunate timing!

Correction: I overstated the ties between the public safety tax and the SPD intially. I explained why that tax is still benefiting cops better in the full story I wrote last fall.