Democratic state Sen. Noel Frame traces her interest in tax policy to her time as a teenager in the 1990s, concerned about scarce funding for her school district in Battle Ground, Washington.
“There was something there about taxes that I needed to figure out,” she recalled to a room packed with progressives here this week. “Here I am, I’m 45, and I’m fighting the same exact fight that I was fighting when I was 16.”
The upcoming bouts will be high-stakes, with lawmakers vexed by a budget shortfall that billions of dollars of tax increases, coupled with spending cuts, failed to resolve this year.
In the state Senate, Frame, who is from Seattle, is running point for Democrats on tax policy.
“The Revenue Queen.” That’s how Eli Taylor Goss, who leads the Washington State Budget and Policy Center, described her at the group’s Budget Matters Policy Summit, held this week at the Northwest African American Museum.
It was a crowd brimming with the belief that the state’s corporate titans and tech executives are not paying their fair share, and must shoulder more of the financial burden for publicly funded education and human services.
Pressure is building for Democrats to take a big swing on taxes, beyond this year’s hikes. How far Frame and her allies can deliver on that goal in 2026 is an open question. Next year’s legislative session, which begins in January, is just 60 days and happening ahead of an election.
“I want to have a future for Washington state where it’s not just a rich person’s playground,” Frame said. “I don’t want to be called the Cayman Islands of the United States.” (The Cayman Islands are considered a tax haven.)
One of the hotter ideas percolating is a possible income tax on wealthier individual earners. Early descriptions suggest a 9.9% tax on adjusted gross income above $1 million.
Senate Democrats have discussed the concept, and it’s circulating among insiders. There’s no draft bill or firm plan on paper yet, Frame told the Standard.
Two other significant — and controversial — revenue bills are already on the table. One, the so-called wealth tax, sponsored by Frame, would tax certain assets, like stocks and bonds, over $50 million. Another would apply a payroll tax to large companies with higher earners.
‘Be prepared to win three times over’
Washington is one of nine states nationwide that do not tax individual wage and salary income.
For progressives, changing that is a holy grail in their quest to rebalance the state’s tax code so it falls less heavily on low-income households. It’s also a third rail. A concept Washington voters have repeatedly rejected and that the state Supreme Court has blocked.
Frame said during a panel discussion Wednesday that she’s “heard more chatter about the income tax in the last six months than I’ve heard in the last 15 years.”
Cynics question if this surging interest has to do with businesses looking to prevent their taxes from climbing further by generating state revenue elsewhere.
That aside, Frame had a cautionary message for the audience — many of whom would be counted on to help enact such a tax.
“Passing that bill in the Legislature is the first step, not the last. We will need to fight and defend this in court. We will have to defend this at the ballot,” she said. “If we do it, we’d better be prepared to win three times over.”
“If we are going to do this, we need to do it right,” the senator added. “And all of you in this room know what that means, what it looks like, and we are going to be the ones that do the work.”
Wealth tax still in play
Frame’s still bullish on the wealth tax.
Her bill cleared the Senate on a 26-21 vote on the final day of this year’s session. The House didn’t debate it, and Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson objected to relying on the tax to balance the budget, citing the likelihood it would get tied up in court.
Frame points to its strong public support and years of refining the legislation since it was first introduced in 2021.
“We have done everything to this bill that we could possibly do, and there is only one argument left,” she said. It’s that rich people will leave the state if the tax is imposed, she explained, adding that research indicates that’s not likely to happen.
Frame doesn’t shy away from her role as a tax champion, even though it puts her at the center of some of the toughest debates in Olympia. “Somebody’s got to do it,” she said.
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