Five-second answer

Claim we investigated

The Washington Legislature has raised taxes or fees more than 100 times since 2017.

Mostly true. Counting each separate change, lawmakers enacted 141 clear increases since 2017; counting whole bills gives about 60. An itemized review of ten years of official Department of Revenue summaries and bill reports finds 141 clear increases, consistent with a partisan bill-level list and an independent 2019 tally once bills are split into their separate changes.

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FactHub rates the claim “The Washington Legislature has raised taxes or fees more than 100 times since 2017” Mostly true (high confidence): Counting each separate change, lawmakers enacted 141 clear increases since 2017; counting whole bills gives about 60. Reviewed October 12, 2026. https://facthub.org/n/article/wa-tax-fee-increases-2017-2026/1

One-minute summary

What the evidence establishes

  • 230 individual tax and fee increases were enacted in the 2017–2026 sessions; 141 are clear increases and 89 are debatable.
  • Counted by bill rather than by change, the total is about 60.
  • 2025 had the most: 72 increases (60 clear), largely from three big revenue bills.
  • Drivers and vehicle owners directly pay the largest share of clear increases (42), followed by specific industries (35) and consumers (14).
  • The Legislature also enacted 111 cuts or rollbacks; 41 were in the same bill as an increase.
  • Counts are not weighted by dollars and are a floor, not a ceiling.
Important context: The number depends on what counts as one increase. A single bill can raise several taxes and fees at once, so counts by bill (about 60) and by individual change (141 clear, 230 including debatable items) both describe the same laws. Counts do not measure dollars, and the Legislature also enacted 111 cuts or rollbacks in the same period. Washington stopped publishing official advisory votes on each tax increase after 2022, so no single official running list exists.

The evidence

The conclusion rests on the combined record. Expand each item to see its role and limitations.

Independence note: This check uses 5 methods across 4 institutions and 1 country or international grouping.
Evidence map
Method Institution / country Year(s) What it shows Key limitation Primary links
Line-by-line review of official legislative summaries, bill reports and fiscal notes Washington State Department of Revenue, Washington State Legislature United States 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 Reading the Department of Revenue's ten yearly summaries and the underlying bill reports, FactHub recorded 230 individual tax and fee increases enacted from the 2017 through 2026 sessions. Of these, 141 are clear increases; 89 are marked debatable, for example local-option authority voters must still approve, regulatory programs, or enforcing collection of tax already owed. The count depends on judgment about how to split a bill into separate changes and which items are debatable; small agency-set fees and some minor licensing bills may be missing, so the totals are a floor. It counts changes, not dollars. FactHub Washington State Department of Revenue Washington State Department of Revenue Washington State Department of Revenue
Comparison with an independently compiled bill-level list Washington State House Republican Caucus United States 2017, 2026 The House Republican Caucus lists 66 tax and fee bills for 2017–2026. After removing duplicates and adding one omission, about 65 bills remain, roughly 59 excluding debatable items. Every bill on that list appears in the itemized dataset, where large bills split into many separate changes. The list is published by a partisan caucus, counts bills rather than changes, includes a few duplicate or mislabeled entries, and omits cuts. Washington State House Republican Caucus FactHub
Comparison with a think-tank session tally Washington Policy Center United States 2019 Washington Policy Center's 2019 recap lists the session's tax increases bill by bill, including the B&O surcharge on services, graduated real estate excise tax, bank surcharge, vapor tax, remote-seller sales tax, nonresident sales tax change and hazardous substance tax. Each appears in the dataset's 2019 rows, which total 35 increases (23 clear). Covers one session only, comes from an organization that advocates lower taxes, and reports revenue rather than a count of changes. Washington Policy Center FactHub Washington State Department of Revenue
Reading a single bill's revenue summary Washington State Legislature United States 2025 The Legislature's revenue summary for the 2025 transportation bill, ESSB 5801, lists separate changes to the gas tax, diesel tax, luxury vehicle and aircraft taxes, motor vehicle sales tax, rental car tax, tire fee, car-sharing tax and several license fees. The dataset records about 23 rows from this one bill, which is why 2025 has 72 increases. One example; other large bills (2022 Move Ahead Washington, 2025 services sales tax) are split the same way but each split is a judgment call. Washington State Legislature (fiscal.wa.gov) FactHub
Itemized review of cuts, exemptions, credits and rollbacks Washington State Department of Revenue, Washington State Legislature United States 2017, 2026 Over the same sessions the dataset records 111 cuts or rollbacks. Of these, 41 were in the same bill as an increase, 2 were tied to an earlier increase in a separate bill, and 68 stood alone. The 2026 session had more cuts (32) than increases (23), including rollbacks of parts of the 2025 services sales tax and estate tax increases. Cuts are counted, not valued; many are narrow exemptions, and 13 of the 2026 cuts depend on the millionaires' income tax surviving a court challenge and the I-645 repeal vote. FactHub Washington State Department of Revenue
1. Itemized review of every session's tax legislation

Reading the Department of Revenue's ten yearly summaries and the underlying bill reports, FactHub recorded 230 individual tax and fee increases enacted from the 2017 through 2026 sessions. Of these, 141 are clear increases; 89 are marked debatable, for example local-option authority voters must still approve, regulatory programs, or enforcing collection of tax already owed.

Limit: The count depends on judgment about how to split a bill into separate changes and which items are debatable; small agency-set fees and some minor licensing bills may be missing, so the totals are a floor. It counts changes, not dollars.

Verify: Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized) 2019 Summary of Tax Legislation 2025 Summary of Legislation 2026 Legislative Report

Washington tax and fee increases by legislative session, 2017–2026Number of individual state tax and fee increases the Washington Legislature enacted in each session from 2017 to 2026, counting only increases not marked debatable.{"width":960,"height":540,"plot":{"left":90,"top":70,"right":926,"bottom":482},"yDomain":[0,60],"series":[{"name":"Value","color":"#176b87"}],"points":[{"series":0,"x":131.8,"y":413.33,"xLabel":"2017","yLabel":"10"},{"series":0,"x":215.4,"y":433.93,"xLabel":"2018","yLabel":"7"},{"series":0,"x":299,"y":324.07,"xLabel":"2019","yLabel":"23"},{"series":0,"x":382.6,"y":461.4,"xLabel":"2020","yLabel":"3"},{"series":0,"x":466.2,"y":447.67,"xLabel":"2021","yLabel":"5"},{"series":0,"x":549.8,"y":392.73,"xLabel":"2022","yLabel":"13"},{"series":0,"x":633.4,"y":454.53,"xLabel":"2023","yLabel":"4"},{"series":0,"x":717,"y":433.93,"xLabel":"2024","yLabel":"7"},{"series":0,"x":800.6,"y":70,"xLabel":"2025","yLabel":"60"},{"series":0,"x":884.2,"y":420.2,"xLabel":"2026","yLabel":"9"}]}Washington tax and fee increases by legislative session, 2017–2026020406020172018202020212022202320252026Legislative sessionCounts changes, not dollarsFactHub · Clear increases (individual changes)
Clear tax and fee increases by legislative session. Bars count separate changes, not dollars; 2025's total reflects three large revenue bills itemized into many changes. View source chart
2. Bill-level count from a partisan caucus list

The House Republican Caucus lists 66 tax and fee bills for 2017–2026. After removing duplicates and adding one omission, about 65 bills remain, roughly 59 excluding debatable items. Every bill on that list appears in the itemized dataset, where large bills split into many separate changes.

Limit: The list is published by a partisan caucus, counts bills rather than changes, includes a few duplicate or mislabeled entries, and omits cuts.

Verify: Tax increases passed by Democrats (2017–2026) Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized)

3. Independent tally of the 2019 session

Washington Policy Center's 2019 recap lists the session's tax increases bill by bill, including the B&O surcharge on services, graduated real estate excise tax, bank surcharge, vapor tax, remote-seller sales tax, nonresident sales tax change and hazardous substance tax. Each appears in the dataset's 2019 rows, which total 35 increases (23 clear).

Limit: Covers one session only, comes from an organization that advocates lower taxes, and reports revenue rather than a count of changes.

Verify: Lawmakers adopted massive 17% increase in spending fueled by numerous tax increases Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized) 2019 Summary of Tax Legislation

4. Why counting changes differs from counting bills

The Legislature's revenue summary for the 2025 transportation bill, ESSB 5801, lists separate changes to the gas tax, diesel tax, luxury vehicle and aircraft taxes, motor vehicle sales tax, rental car tax, tire fee, car-sharing tax and several license fees. The dataset records about 23 rows from this one bill, which is why 2025 has 72 increases.

Limit: One example; other large bills (2022 Move Ahead Washington, 2025 services sales tax) are split the same way but each split is a judgment call.

Verify: Revenue summary, 2025 ESSB 5801 Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized)

5. Cuts and rollbacks enacted in the same period

Over the same sessions the dataset records 111 cuts or rollbacks. Of these, 41 were in the same bill as an increase, 2 were tied to an earlier increase in a separate bill, and 68 stood alone. The 2026 session had more cuts (32) than increases (23), including rollbacks of parts of the 2025 services sales tax and estate tax increases.

Limit: Cuts are counted, not valued; many are narrow exemptions, and 13 of the 2026 cuts depend on the millionaires' income tax surviving a court challenge and the I-645 repeal vote.

Verify: Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized) 2026 Legislative Report

Common questions

“Counting each fee in a bill separately inflates the number.”

It produces a larger number than counting bills, which is why the article reports both. Each row is a distinct tax or fee a person or business pays, and the dataset lets anyone recount by bill.

“Many of these are tiny fees, not real tax increases.”

Fees are included and labeled; filtering the dataset to taxes only (new taxes, rate increases and base expansions) still leaves 79 clear increases. The count measures how often, not how much.

“The Legislature also cut taxes, so the count is one-sided.”

The dataset records 111 cuts and rollbacks alongside the increases, and the article reports them. Counts of cuts and increases are not netted because their dollar sizes differ widely.

“Local-option taxes are decided by voters, not the Legislature.”

Agreed; all 27 local-authority items are marked debatable and are excluded from the 141 clear increases.

Conclusion

The claim holds if each tax or fee change is counted separately, which is how most taxpayers experience them: a higher gas tax and a new rental car tax are two increases even when one bill enacts both. On that basis the dataset finds 141 clear increases from 2017 through 2026, and 230 if debatable items such as local-option authority, regulatory programs and enforcement of existing taxes are included. Even the conservative figure exceeds 100. The claim is rated Mostly true rather than True because the phrase 'times' is commonly read as votes or bills, and on that reading the Legislature passed about 60 tax and fee bills, fewer than 100. The rating also reflects omitted context: the counts are not weighted by revenue, so a small license fee counts the same as a statewide tax, and the same sessions enacted 111 cuts or rollbacks, 41 of them inside bills that also raised taxes. The number of increases is concentrated in a few sessions: 2025 alone accounts for 60 clear increases, 2019 for 23 and 2022 for 13. Confidence is high that the count exceeds 100 because the gap between 141 and 100 is larger than any plausible disagreement over classification, and the dataset cites a source for every row. What remains uncertain is the exact total, which is a floor, and the future status of 2026 changes tied to the pending court challenge and the November 3, 2026 I-645 vote.

How we checked

  1. Defined the claim as: more than 100 state tax or fee increases enacted by the Legislature in the 2017 through 2026 sessions.
  2. Read the Department of Revenue's yearly tax-legislation summaries for 2017–2026 and the bill reports, session laws and fiscal notes they cite.
  3. Recorded each distinct tax or fee change as one row, with its type, who pays, status and source; a single rate schedule is one row.
  4. Marked items a fair critic could dispute as debatable and reported counts with and without them.
  5. Cross-checked against a partisan bill-level list and an independent think-tank tally of 2019, and recorded corrections where they disagreed.
  6. Recorded cuts and rollbacks in a separate table and linked each to any increase it was packaged with.
  7. Archived every cited source and listed known limits in the dataset and in each evidence item.

Editorial note: Scope: state legislation only; city and county taxes, including Seattle and Olympia measures, are excluded, as are fees set by agency rule. The count uses individual changes as its unit; the dataset lets readers recount by bill, by type or by who pays. A partisan caucus list was used only as a starting checklist and every item was verified against official summaries. This article takes no position on whether any tax was justified.

Expert-review status

No external specialist review has been recorded.

Funding and conflicts

Funding: No external funding for this piece.

Ownership: Published by FactHub. Research was compiled with an AI assistant (Claude, Anthropic) and checked against the cited sources.

Conflicts: None known.

Sources

Sources are labeled by their role so readers can evaluate the evidence independently.

  1. Curated dataset (this article's primary evidence) FactHub. Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized)

    230 increase rows and 111 cut rows, one per individual change, each with a row-level source link, type, who pays, status and a debatable flag.

  2. Official state summary Washington State Department of Revenue. 2019 Summary of Tax Legislation

    The Department of Revenue's yearly summary of every tax bill signed; one of ten such summaries (2017–2026) used to build the dataset.

    Archived copy captured October 12, 2026
  3. Official state summary Washington State Department of Revenue. 2025 Summary of Legislation

    Summary of the 2025 session's tax bills, the session with the most itemized increases.

    Archived copy captured August 7, 2026
  4. Official state summary Washington State Department of Revenue. 2026 Legislative Report

    Summary of 2026 tax legislation, including the millionaires' income tax and the cuts and rollbacks enacted that session.

    Archived copy captured August 7, 2026
  5. Legislative fiscal document Washington State Legislature (fiscal.wa.gov). Revenue summary, 2025 ESSB 5801

    Lists the separate taxes and fees in the 2025 transportation revenue bill, showing how one bill contains many changes.

    Archived copy captured October 12, 2026
  6. Partisan compilation (cross-check) Washington State House Republican Caucus. Tax increases passed by Democrats (2017–2026)

    A bill-level list of 66 entries for 2017–2026; used as a starting checklist and for comparison. Partisan source.

    Archived copy captured October 12, 2026
  7. Independent think-tank tally (cross-check) Washington Policy Center. Lawmakers adopted massive 17% increase in spending fueled by numerous tax increases

    Itemizes the 2019 session's tax increases by bill with revenue estimates; a non-government cross-check of the 2019 rows.

    Archived copy captured October 12, 2026
  8. Independent election reference Ballotpedia. Washington and Wisconsin enact laws limiting advisory questions on ballots

    Records that 40 statewide tax advisory votes appeared from 2012 to 2022 and that the Legislature ended them in 2023, which removed the official running list of tax increases.

    Archived copy captured October 12, 2026
  9. FactHub dataset Washington Legislature tax and fee changes, 2017–2026 sessions (itemized)

    • Tables: increases, cuts

      Saved analysis headline-totals

    • Tables: increases, cuts

      Saved analysis counts-by-session

    • Tables: increases

      Saved analysis increases-by-who-pays

    • Tables: increases

      Saved analysis increases-by-type

    • Tables: cuts

      Saved analysis cuts-by-packaging

  10. FactHub chart wa-tax-fee-increases-by-session

Update history

  1. Initial version.

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