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Revenue from a proposed Washington state income tax on the highest yearly earners could be used to address one of Lewis County’s biggest concerns, but in a way that the state lawmakers staunchly oppose.
Earlier this week, the Washington state Senate approved the so-called “Millionaire’s Tax” that would institute a uniform 9.9% income tax on households making more than $1 million a year in the state. This includes married couples filing jointly who make a combined income over $1 million.
Democrats supporting the bill have heralded it as a fix to the state’s “regressive” tax code and, as such, the bill includes tax relief in the form of tax breaks and local government funding. That was a demand of Gov. Bob. Ferguson, who has said a significant portion of the tax should be used to relieve the burden on lower income residents.
Republicans in the state Legislature, including all of the state lawmakers from the 20th and 19th legislative districts, which represent large chunks of Southwest Washington, are opposed and voted against the bill.
Republicans say the tax is unconstitutional and warn if passed that the scope of the tax could be expanded in the future to tax people earning less. They also argue the policy doesn’t truly deliver on its promise to provide tax relief to the state’s low- and middle-income residents.
Despite promises of tax relief from majority Democrats, Republicans have reminded taxpayers frequently that the current proposal will put roughly $2 billion dollars into the state’s general fund even after paying for the included tax relief.
“There’s no way to look at this and say, ‘Hey, we were able to really look back out for the taxpayer payer in this deal,’” Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, said during a panel discussion with Allied Daily Newspapers on the Capitol Campus Thursday. “We are talking about enormous tax increases … This is still an enormous tax increase in the big numbers.”
But the policy would deliver on one key issue, a rising concern for the Lewis County government and many counties in the state. It provides significant funding for public defense at the county level. It also proposes expanding the Washington state Working Families Tax credit, but how the expansion will impact Lewis County specifically is more murky.
According to data from the Washington state Department of Revenue (DOR), the proposed tax, if enacted right now, would fall on the heads of 20,791 households in the state, bringing in just over $3 billion in revenue.
DOR has also collected data about how the tax will impact specific parts of the state organized by legislative districts. According to the data provided, 206 households in the 20th Legislative District — which encompasses most of Lewis and Cowlitz counties and smaller parts of Thurston and Clark counties — would pay the tax.
Another 61 households in the 19th Legislative District would also pay the 9.9% income tax. That district covers most of the parts of Lewis County west of Interstate 5 as well as all of Pacific and Whakiakum counties and smaller portions of Cowlitz and Grays Harbor counties.
Public defense
According to a legislative summary of the bill, it would send up to 7% of the revenue collected to cities and counties to fund public defense, with most of that going to counties and distributed based on income statistics and caseloads in each county.
Lewis County officials did not provide an official statement on the potential impact of the sum but instead pointed to information provided to them by the Washington state Association of Counties (WASC). According to Lewis County Budget Administrator Becky Butler, who cited an estimate from WASC, the county would receive approximately $3.9 million for public defense.
The investment in public defense is a direct response to a decision by the Washington state Supreme Court from June 2025 to slash caseload maximums for public defenders in the state. The new caseload standards drop the maximum caseloads by roughly a third, from 140 felony cases a year to just 47 and from 400 misdemeanor cases a year to just 120.
The order calls on counties to institute the new caseload standards over the next 10 years, dropping their maximum cases allowed. Last fall, Lewis County asked its public defenders to handle 150 felonies and 300 misdemeanors a year.
Many counties in Washington state, both big and small, rural and urban, have sounded the alarm since that ruling. Lewis County officials have said the local government already struggled to fund public defense before the caseload rule, which would likely require hiring more defence attorneys for those who cannot afford their own and drive even higher costs.
Most recently, the Lewis County Board of Commissioners penned a commentary published in The Chronicle signed by all three commissioners, Lindsey Pollock, Scott Brummer and Sean Swope, calling on the state to fund 50% of local public defense costs by 2031 and to take action to secure that funding this session.
“In other counties, cases have been dismissed and defendants released simply because public defenders were unavailable,” reads the commentary. “Lewis County is not immune. Without meaningful state investment, this same crisis will reach our courtrooms.”
According to the letter from the Lewis County Board of Commissioners, the county spent just over $2 million on public defense services last year while the Washington State Office of Public Defense contributed $110,691.
The $3.9 million from the state, if applied to last year, would have covered the cost of public defense and then some. As to how that funding will look in the future, the answer is less clear, as the proposed income tax bill could still change or fail to go into law at all. It’s also likely that public defense costs will continue to rise as the county continues to implement new caseload standards.
Even if the bill does pass and overcomes any other obstacles, such as expected legal challenges, it would not go into effect until 2029 at the earliest.
Tax relief
As far as direct tax relief for middle- and low-income Washingtonians, the proposed bill seeks to expand tax credits for working families and small businesses. It also provides sales tax exemptions for certain hygiene and grooming products and increases tax exemptions for small businesses making less than $600,000 in gross income each year.
That being said, Ferguson has called on Democrats working on the bill to expand that direct tax relief even more.
Early on in the session, the governor called on the state to both expand eligibility requirements for the Working Families Tax Credit so more people could qualify and provide bigger refunds. The current version of the bill expands the age requirement to as low as 18 years old for people who meet all other requirements for the tax credit.
According to data from the Washington state Department of Revenue, in 2024, approximately 4,800 filers in Lewis County qualify for the tax credit. Those who qualified in the county received approximately a combined $1.8 million in tax refunds in 2024.
It’s unclear how many more individuals in the county would qualify under the proposed expansions of the Working Families Tax Credit or how much of a tax refund they might receive.
