Gov. Bob Ferguson proposed an income tax that would only apply for people who earn more than $1 million Dec. 23, 2025.
Republican state Sen. John Braun (representing Centralia) wrote a commentary in The Chronicle Jan. 16 that said the governor’s tax the rich proposal was “bait” for the real purpose, which is an income tax for everyone. I think we need a tax on the rich that is guaranteed to lower the tax on the working class.
Currently, our state’s tax system is one of the most regressive in the country. Rich people end up paying a lower percentage of their income on state taxes than people in the working class. According to Gov. Ferguson’s post, Washington ranks next to last for fairness and equality in our tax system. Washington families whose income is in the bottom 20% pay 13.8% of their total income in taxes, while those whose income is in the top 1% pay only 4.1% of their income.
Much of the reason is that Washington relies on sales taxes. Lower income people spend everything they make, and thus get taxed on everything. Wealthy people often put their money in investments that don’t get taxed.
The current system is working very well for rich people in America and especially for rich people in Washington state.
According to an article written by the PEW Research Center written in 2020 called, “Trends in U.S. income and Wealth,” income inequality is found to have increased about 20% from 1980 to 2016. Income growth has been the most rapid for the top 5%. On Jan. 21, CBS News released an article titled, “Wealth inequality in America just hit its widest gap in three decades.”
Taxes on the rich have been much higher in the past, and the economy grew. We now have a top tax bracket for federal taxes of 37%. The current annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is about 4%. In 1962, the top tax bracket was 91% and the growth rate was 6.1%. There is no logical reason why rich people should not be taxed more.
The rich people in Washington have done especially well in recent years, according to an article in The Seattle Times called, “Tax the rich may be reaching a boiling point in Washington.” This article was published on Dec. 20, 2025. In 2017, 12,520 Washingtonians made more than one million dollars in income. Just five years later, the number soared to 28,930, which is a 131% increase.
Currently, the tax system is rigged to benefit the wealthy people in Washington. We should restructure our tax system so that the very rich pay more. At the same time, we need to ensure that the money that is collected goes to lowering the tax burden on working class people. Both Republican and Democratic working class people would benefit from this.
Daniel Meekhof
Packwood
