WA Sen. Jamie Pedersen’s Millionaire Tax Is Too Little, Too Late
- Patrick O'Neill
- 3 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Washington State’s tax policy is long past due for an overhaul, but the current efforts being put forward by Jamie Pedersen perfectly encapsulate the continuously insufficient and out of touch response to Trump era policies by leaders of the Democratic party both federally and statewide. Once the sunsetting business taxes and real estate loopholes are accounted for; SB 6346, the “Millionaire’s Tax”, is just another slogan trying to overshadow a lack of real substantial progressive revenue, and its bias for the same old tired neoliberal business first tax policy.
While speaking with Jerry Cornfield of the Washington State Standard this week, Sen. Pedersen explained away his complete dismissal of progressive revenue via a corporate payroll expense tax, which he’d previously supported, by saying that, “for a lot of [businesses], that is existential [to] their ability to grow in this market.” He half-heartedly offered his personal musings about how a payroll expense tax may not have support in the senate that he leads, despite 18 state house representatives signing on to sponsor HB 2100, a bill authored by his district seatmate, Rep. Shaun Scott, which would enact such a tax.
In a separate op-ed for the Seattle Times, Pedersen instead offered support for a “millionaires income tax”, a state tax policy that is undoubtedly needed in Washington, the US state with the second most regressive tax policy. Pedersen’s support for this alternative to a corporate payroll tax is notably framed less as a way to fund services, and more as a means to balance the state budget with ‘narrow’ taxes, a poorly-veiled assurance to the capitalist class that their wealth and power will be largely unaffected. An income tax on high earning individuals in Washington State would signal an enormous change in state tax policy, one that has been fought for by labor unions, activists and tax justice reformers for 100 years, and that is a victory for the average worker, but the fine print matters.
In his interview with Cornfield, Pedersen neglects to mention how the income tax would help Washingtonians who will be harmed by the Trump administration's massive federal cuts to state funding, a crisis which spurred Representative Scott to author HB 2100 in the first place. Pedersen has seemingly never considered how “existential” these budget shortfalls are for them, and indeed, the everyday needs of Washington residents do not appear to be centered in any of the arguments we’ve seen from our state’s Democratic Senate Majority Leader.
Pedersen’s 9th-inning release of the text for a state income tax seems largely to be the effort of a career politician who understands where the political winds are blowing in regard to taxation, but is unwilling to rise to the political moment and enact a truly transformative solution that benefits working Washingtonians right now, before the legislative session ends this year. Even our austerity-obsessed Governor Bob Ferguson has been left unimpressed by the inadequate effort put forward by the Majority Leader calling it a “good start”, but adding it does not put enough money back into the pockets of Washingtonians and like Pedersen, largely ignoring the elephant in the room; an income tax alone will not save the programs being gutted by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”.
With these statements and op-eds, Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen has shown that his approach to tax policy in Washington state is clearly informed by an allegiance to big business, and the proof of this approach is his refusal to support a corporate tax in tandem with an income tax; a solution which would actually meet the moment our state finds itself in.
This should not come as a surprise, though; the favoritism towards business by the vast majority of both Republican and Democratic politicians is the reason that our state politics continues to do so little for ordinary people. The problems and pitfalls of our lives are simply not the priority of the majority of people sitting in the halls of power. While many of these politicians paint a rosy picture, or sing a good song when they know their constituents are listening and watching, these moments of candor in otherwise innocuous settings need to be more heavily scrutinized.
The average Washington voter is frankly uninterested and unconcerned about whether or not payroll taxes are theoretically existential for Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, or Starbucks. What the average Washington voter knows for a fact is that right now they cannot afford groceries like they used to, are forced to make choices between healthcare and higher education, and find it increasingly difficult to make time for themself. As capitalism continues to devour the lives of working people for the benefit of the rich, it becomes more and more impossible for the human spirit to flourish under the weight of its antisocial and insatiable need to grow, even as its growth suffocates the rest of us.
2026 is a year of elections all across Washington, including Jamie Pedersen’s, and as we prepare to consider who we choose to represent us in the halls of power, we should ask ourselves: who do our representatives center in their public statements, businesses or working people? If our representatives, like Pedersen, consistently speak about business and growth, or contemplate recapturing a status quo that never worked to begin with, our best interests will never be served by them.
We cannot continue to waste precious time and energy deluding ourselves into believing we can have politicians like Pedersen that magically balance loyalty to both the working class and the capitalist class. We must choose representatives who believe in using the power of elected office to organize their communities, in their workplaces and in their neighborhoods, so that we can begin to democratically build the structures that we need for our lives to flourish.
State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen and House Finance Committee Chair April Berg have a generational opportunity during this legislative session to rally their caucus around the Well Washington Fund, and bring about a truly transformational tax policy to Washington State. HB 2100 is a bill the people of Washington deserve to have passed, because it would enact tax policy that would restore critical funding for the social services our families and neighbors need to maintain our future together. Let’s make sure our representatives know we are watching, and that we want them to take action. If they can’t accomplish this, we must replace them with elected officials who can.