Organization on FactHub
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Fact check: when ESSB 6346 takes effect in 2028, Washington's 9.9% top rate would tie Oregon's for fifth among the 50 states, behind California, Hawaii, New York and New Jersey. Because the first $1 million is untaxed, Washington's average rate on high earners would be the lowest of four high-rate states compared. The Tax Foundation's 18.037% Seattle figure adds payroll taxes.
Fact check: The official revenue estimate for Washington's 9.9% tax on income over $1 million says affected taxpayers "do not reduce taxable income." The best study of California's 2012 top-rate increase found responses erased 45% of the expected new revenue in the first year and 61% within two years, mostly through less reported income rather than moving. But most similar taxes still brought in more than officials projected, because market swings outweighed those responses.
Fact check: ESSB 6346 amends 13 public-pension statutes so their tax exemption does not apply to the new 9.9% income tax, and pensions, IRA withdrawals and taxable Social Security all count toward the $1 million threshold. Only households with more than $1 million of income owe it; about 3,000 Washington returns in that group reported retirement income in 2022. The Yes campaign's 'every income level' and 'without notice or debate' lines go too far.
ESSB 6346 paired a 9.9% tax on income over $1 million with sales-tax, B&O and tax-credit relief. The relief returns about 30% of the new tax; the state keeps about 70% for general spending, making it the largest inflation-adjusted tax increase since at least the early 1990s.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal posted that I-645 would give millionaires and billionaires a $300 billion tax break. Every official estimate, and the No campaign ad she linked, puts the figure near $13 billion over four years.
Fact check: the No on I-645 campaign's voters' pamphlet rebuttal says any attempt to expand the millionaires tax below $1 million 'would be decided on the ballot - voters always have the final say.' No law requires that. The $1 million deduction is an ordinary statute, the House rejected an amendment that would have sent any reduction to a referendum, and the tax itself was shielded from referendum by a necessity clause the Supreme Court upheld. Voters can still respond by initiative, or by referendum if a future change lacks such a clause.
The No on I-645 voters' pamphlet statement says Washington has one of the nation's most upside-down tax systems. The leading 50-state study, by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, ranks Washington second most regressive: middle-income families pay 10.9% of income in state and local taxes and the top 1% pay 4.1%. Critics dispute ITEP's assumptions but agree the system is regressive; in dollars the top 1% pay about 33 times more.
Fact check: the $1 million standard deduction in Washington's 9.9% income tax is an ordinary statute that a future Legislature could lower by majority vote, and the tax carries a necessity clause that kept it from a referendum. During the 2026 session lawmakers rejected amendments to require a referendum for any cut or to lock the threshold into the constitution. No bill to lower it exists, Gov. Bob Ferguson has pledged to veto one, and the only lawmaker to float a lower threshold, Rep. Cindy Ryu, paired it with a lower rate and was rebuffed by fellow Democrats.
Fact check: The No on I-645 campaign tells voters the initiative would raise taxes for 460,000 Washington families and bring back sales tax on diapers. The initiative repeals only the income tax. Its repeal list leaves out every relief section of the 2026 law, and the Attorney General says the credits and exemptions remain. The real risk is a later budget choice, not I-645 itself.
The Yes on I-645 voters' pamphlet statement says Washingtonians rejected an income tax ten times in 90 years. The Secretary of State's list confirms ten defeats from 1934 to 2010, but it also shows voters approved one in 1932, two of the ten were corporate taxes, and in 2024 voters kept the capital gains tax.
Fact check of two lines in the Yes on I-645 Voters' Pamphlet argument. Washington's operating budgets enacted from 2021 to 2026 contain 81-83 transfers into the general fund from other accounts, 72 if routine cannabis, tobacco-settlement and rainy-day flows are left out, most of them in the 2026 supplemental budget. Three of the pamphlet's four examples check out; flood control does not. The early-learning expansions the capital gains tax was meant to support were delayed or cut back, though that money was never legally dedicated to early learning.
State officials treat I-645 as repealing only the 2026 millionaires tax: the fiscal impact statement assumes no other tax is affected, and the Attorney General says it is the only tax the measure explicitly repeals. A leading independent expert thinks courts would likely keep the capital gains tax. But I-645 also bans any tax 'measured by an individual's income', and the Supreme Court upheld the capital gains tax by describing it as measured by capital gains, so lawyers on both sides call the question real. No court has ruled.
The No campaign's $13 billion is four years of the Legislature's own revenue estimate. But nothing is collected until April 2029, no current budget spends it, and the law dedicates none of it to K-12.
Fact check: Sound Transit's 1.1% motor vehicle excise tax still values cars with a 1990s depreciation schedule that state law keeps in place until its 1999 bonds are repaid in 2028. A 2006 legislative study found that schedule above market value for cars under 10 years old, though below it for older cars.
Fact check: Seattle's 2020 JumpStart payroll tax was planned to put 62% of its revenue into affordable housing. Every budget since has moved part of it to the General Fund, from $84 million to $305 million a year, and in 2024 the city made that a standing use. Housing still gets about $140 million a year, roughly what the 2020 plan expected, but far less than 62% of what the tax now raises.
Fact check: Microsoft's free consumer Extended Security Updates program for Windows 10 was set to end October 13, 2026, but a June 25, 2026 change to Microsoft's own pages extended it a year. Enrolled home PCs keep getting security patches through October 12, 2027.
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Initiative 638 would limit girls-only school competition in Washington to students the measure defines as biologically female, verified by each girl's health care provider. This briefing lays out what the measure does, every checkable claim each campaign made in the voters' pamphlet, and FactHub's fact checks of them.
What FactHub has checked about how fast California's spending grew compared with Texas, Florida, New York and the U.S., what results followed in homelessness, schools, Medi-Cal and high-speed rail, and what auditors and prosecutors found. Each rating comes from a linked fact check.
Initiative 645 would repeal Washington's 9.9% tax on household income over $1 million and bar state and local income taxes. This briefing lays out what the measure does, every checkable claim each campaign made in the voters' pamphlet, and FactHub's fact checks of them.
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Seattle-King County permanent supportive housing beds in January 2025 by operator. Only one project, DESC's 15-bed Kerner Scott Clean and Sober, is labeled sober.
911 calls coded as overdoses at Seattle street addresses, January 2023 to October 2026. Bars are colored by what is at the address: supportive housing (apartments for formerly homeless people, with on-site services) or another kind of place.
911 calls dispatched as overdoses per 100 apartments a year, January 2023 to October 2026, at the 10 supportive housing buildings with the most calls, against the average for all supportive housing and for other rental buildings with 50+ units.
Incidents the Seattle Fire Department dispatched as illegal burns, rubbish fires or encampment fires, January to October of each year, 2004 to 2026. The 2026 total, 3,809, is the highest since the dispatch log began, about six times the 2015 to 2018 level.
Full-year 911 calls the Seattle Fire Department dispatched as illegal burns, rubbish fires or encampment fires, beside the fires the department verified at tent and RV encampments, 2022 to 2025. Verified encampment fires fell from 1,617 to 830 while the calls stayed near 4,500 a year.
