Washington 'millionaires tax' repeal faces legal fight over 21 words

Jim Brunner, The Seattle Times on Jul 28, 2026

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SEATTLE — The sponsor of an initiative to repeal Washington’s new high-earners income tax is challenging ballot language on the financial impacts of killing the tax.

Let’s Go Washington, the group behind Initiative 645, filed a lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court on Monday asking a judge to rewrite wording that says the tax-cutting measure would eliminate money for schools and other services.

That description, called a public investment impact disclosure, appears just below the ballot title for I-645, which aims to repeal the so-called “millionaires tax” in November.

The language approved by the attorney general’s office states: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”

The stakes over those 21 words are high for the November vote on I-645, which would repeal the recently enacted 9.9% tax on households earning more than $1 million a year. Polling has suggested the language tying the tax repeal to reduced money for schools and other programs causes a significant drop-off in support for tax-cutting initiatives.

The ballot wording follows precise requirements created by a 2022 state law passed by majority Democrats to push back against tax-cutting initiatives they said didn’t give the public a sense of the consequences for public services.

But Brian Heywood, the Redmond hedge fund manager bankrolling I-645, argues the language chosen by Attorney General Nick Brown’s office is a misleading effort to put a hand on the scale as voters weigh a verdict this fall.

Heywood said it’s speculative to say what the impact of repealing the tax would be, noting the state isn’t slated to start collecting it until 2029.

“You can’t cut money that doesn’t exist,” Heywood said in a news release, arguing I-645 would actually increase state funding by eliminating the need to set up “an income tax bureaucracy” and defend the tax against legal challenges.

Heywood’s lawsuit contends the ballot language is “inaccurate and would create prejudice against the measure.” The lawsuit asks the court to rewrite the ballot language to say I-645’s passage would “increase funding for the 2026-2027 state general fund, which funds primarily “medical assistance-programs, public instruction, and higher education.”

It’s the second lawsuit to challenge the impact language on the ballot. Last week, open-government activist Arthur West filed a separate case challenging the constitutionality of the impact disclosures.

West argues the language added after voters have signed initiative petitions interferes with the constitutional right of the people to pass laws through the initiative process.

Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, defended the ballot wording last week, saying the ballot language “ensures voters receive information about initiatives they are asked to decide.”

In an email Tuesday Faulk said the attorney general’s office “will continue reviewing the challenges and will respond in court.”

Andrew Villeneuve, executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, who supported the impact disclosures when they were passed by the Legislature, said they were intended to correct “this historic problem” of tax-cutting measures concealing their impacts on public services.

“I don’t think it’s loaded language,” Villeneuve said of the ballot wording.

Republicans challenged a similar impact statement added to a 2024 initiative that sought to repeal the state’s new capital gains tax on investment profits for the wealthiest state residents.

That challenge was unsuccessful and the repeal initiative, also sponsored by Let’s Go Washington, was rejected by 62% of voters.

West’s lawsuit and the case filed by Let’s Go Washington are taking different legal angles from the 2024 challenge — testing the legality and boundaries of the relatively new ballot language requirements.

A hearing on West’s lawsuit has been scheduled for Aug. 7.

As of Tuesday afternoon the schedule for the Let’s Go Washington lawsuit had not been set, but state law says a Superior Court judge must decide the final ballot language within five business days of a challenge.