Letter: The rich benefit from inequality in state taxes

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Editor,

I am responding to one of Fred Wilwerth’s weekly letters to the editor from your April 18 edition.

His rant essentially makes the following points:

1. That the recently passed “Millionaires Tax” is somehow theft by the covernor.

2. That the tax is unconstitutional under Washington’s state Constitution.

Let’s start with the second point, a technical legal issue. Washington’s Constitution provides that “all taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property,” In a 1933 case (Culliton vs. Chase), a divided Supreme Court narrowly held by a 5-4 vote that a graduated income tax bill was invalid by holding that income was “property” within the meaning the above Constitutional passage and, therefore, any graduated income tax was not valid since it was not “uniform.” Washington is one of only two states that classifies income as “property.” If, in the litigation that is already in process, the Supreme Court decides to hear the challenge to the new law and again finds that income is “property,” then the new law will be invalidated. If the court decides to reverse the narrowly decided holding in Culliton and deem that income is not “property”, then the new law will likely stand. In any event, the issue has not been decided, and stating the new law is “unconstitutional” is a bit premature, for even a Supreme Court can change its mind (I referring to you Roe v. Wade).

As to the first point, this is a policy issue. As a result of the Culliton decision, Washington has been unable, to this point, to pass a graduated income tax (or any income tax, for that matter). Since its other taxes (i.e. property tax, sales tax, gas tax, etc) are necessarily “uniform” (i.e. everyone the same amount of tax based on their purchases of goods or gas and pays the same percentage based on the value of their property), the result has been that lower income families pay a much higher percentage of their total income in taxes compared to higher income families. Now, I am not saying here that a graduated income tax is the best or only solution to this obvious inequity, but it does raise the question of who exactly is doing the thieven that Mr. Wilferth rants about.

Steve Bezaire

Langley