Opinion | Tax millionaires to fix WA's broken tax system

Over the next two months, Washington state will be considering a new tax on people who earn over a million dollars a year, and I couldn’t be more ready.

Right now, every family I know, including my own, is worried about their future and tightening up their spending. The cost of groceries and gas is too high. Housing costs are through the roof. Healthcare premiums keep rising while our healthcare plans get crummier. My family is feeling it, so are my friends, and so are my neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, most people in rural Washington know what hard times feel like and how to put our heads down and make it through. I’m proud of that. But we all deserve better than this.

For years, everyday people have watched as our paychecks cover less and the richest get richer off our hard work. You don’t have to convince many of us in rural Washington that things are unfair — we know it. We know that the CEO of Weyerhaeuser lumber makes 180 times more than a millwright, but he doesn’t work 180 times harder. We know that a 40-hour-a-week job should be enough to feed our families, see a doctor, and plan for our future, but most jobs don’t pay us what we’re worth. To make sense of our hard times, we get told to blame our neighbors, other poor people, immigrants, single moms, and more, all so we don’t notice when the super-rich make their first–or fortieth–billion. The stories they tell us are meant to keep us fighting each other, but we don’t have to buy it.

The truth is, in Washington state, all working families have gotten the short end of the stick for decades, and it’s not our neighbors' fault. We have the second-most upside-down tax system in the country. That means people who make the least pay the most of their hard-earned dollars in taxes. If you earn what the average grocery store clerk makes, about 14% of your income goes to taxes. But if you’re a CEO at Amazon in Seattle, you pay closer to 4%. That’s what a broken tax system looks like. It favors major corporations and the super-rich over the families who fuel our economy and our communities.

The more pressed working-class people feel in places like North Central Washington, the harder it gets to ask them to pass a bond or a levy for our local schools, firefighters, police, parks, and downtowns. We can’t keep looking to working families to be the ones that pitch in the most. We’ve reached the end of the road with our current tax structure.

A few years ago, I talked with a teacher who had been in the Wenatchee schools for decades. She went to the union meetings that won school staff better pay, passed school bonds to fix broken roofs, and protected levies that kept public schools afloat. I asked her to tell me the one change, the one fix, that would really make a difference for our public schools. Her answer was simple: fix the broken tax code. She knew — like teachers all across the state do — that our schools depend on our communities, but when the rich are exempt from paying their fair share, there just ain’t enough to go around.

Fortunately, this year, we have a chance to finally make things more fair. Washington State leaders are proposing a tax on incomes of a million or more a year, and we’re ready for it. It's beyond time for the richest among us to pay their fair share.

But we all want more than just an income tax on millionaires, we want to see the burden lifted from working families. If we (finally) tax millionaires what they owe, let’s reduce the sales tax on essential goods like diapers and soap. Let’s give small businesses a break on revenue taxes like B&O. Let's extend public programs like the Working Families Tax Credit or childcare subsidies. We’ve earned it. Our grandparents earned it. Our kids, schools, parks, and families deserve it.

So, if you think it’s time for the super-rich to pitch in like the rest of us, get in touch with your state representatives. It doesn’t matter which party they belong to, this is a working families issue, and it’s time we all showed up for what’s right.

Elana Mainer is the executive director of Rural People’s Voice.

Published in The Wenatchee World on January 17, 2026