More than half of Washington state's business leaders say they are thinking about moving out of the state, and Seattle's self-described democratic socialist mayor finds that funny.
Katie Wilson, the 43-year-old who took office on January 1, laughed during a FOX 13 Seattle interview last week while waving away concerns that the state's new 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million a year is driving wealth and enterprise toward the border. The survey that prompted the question, conducted by the Association of Washington Business and unveiled in May, found that 55% of state business leaders are now considering relocating their personal residence to another state.
That figure was 44% earlier this year. It jumped 11 percentage points after Washington state Democrats passed the millionaires tax in March. And Wilson's response, as the New York Post reported, was to chuckle and call the whole thing overblown.
The Association of Washington Business survey didn't just ask whether employers were daydreaming about greener pastures. It found that 28% of those considering a move were already actively scouting locations outside Washington. Another 18% had gone further, they already own a home or condo in another state.
And 72% of respondents identified Washington state's overall tax burden as "a top business challenge."
None of this appeared to trouble Wilson. In her FOX 13 Seattle interview, she offered this:
"I still think that claims of a large exodus of rich people due to our statewide millionaire tax that the legislature passed this year are overblown."
Overblown. Fifty-five percent of the state's business leaders are telling a trade association they want out, and the mayor of the state's largest city treats it like a punchline.
Wilson framed the tension between her administration and the business community as a media invention rather than a policy consequence. She pointed to her first five months in office and insisted the real story was cooperation, not conflict.
"When I think about the last five months and the things that I and my administration have done to build bridges with the business community, the narrative that was spun around those things is very, very out of step with the reality."
Her evidence? A 90-unit tiny house village intended to temporarily house homeless people in Seattle, which Wilson claimed had drawn support from major Washington-based corporations including Starbucks, T-Mobile, and Microsoft. She seized on Starbucks in particular to argue that the narrative of a socialist mayor at war with corporate Seattle was overdrawn.
"This narrative that it's like Seattle socialist mayor versus Starbucks, like well, then why are they donating a million dollars to our shelter site?"
A corporate donation to a homeless shelter is not evidence that the state's tax climate is healthy. Companies routinely donate to local causes in cities where they are headquartered, even cities whose policies they privately oppose. The question is not whether Starbucks will write a check for a shelter. The question is whether the people who create jobs and generate tax revenue will stay long enough to keep writing checks at all.
Washington state Democrats passed the millionaires tax in March, imposing a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million annually. Washington had long been one of a handful of states with no personal income tax, a distinction that attracted high earners, entrepreneurs, and corporate headquarters to the Pacific Northwest.
That competitive advantage is now gone. And the Association of Washington Business survey suggests the consequences are arriving faster than Olympia anticipated. The 11-point spike in business leaders considering relocation, from 44% to 55%, occurred in the months immediately following the tax's passage.
Democrat House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon has pushed back on relocation fears by pointing to last year's U-Haul Growth Index, which ranked Washington sixth in the nation for growth, one spot higher than the prior year. But U-Haul truck rentals measure a broad population flow that includes every income bracket and every reason for moving. They do not isolate the behavior of high-income taxpayers and business owners who generate outsized shares of state revenue.
A state can gain population and still lose its tax base if the people leaving are the ones who pay the most.
Wilson, raised in Binghamton, New York, attended the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom but dropped out six weeks before she was due to sit her final exams. She has been described as a democratic socialist and was financially supported by her parents, a biographical detail that sits uneasily beside her comfort with taxing other people's earnings at nearly 10%.
She took office as Seattle's mayor on January 1 and has spent much of her first months in office navigating the city's persistent homelessness crisis. The 90-unit tiny house village she touted in her FOX 13 interview is part of that effort. But the broader policy environment she champions, higher taxes on wealth, an expanding public footprint in housing, and a dismissive posture toward business anxiety, tracks closely with the progressive governance model that has already pushed residents and employers out of cities like San Francisco and Portland.
Trade association surveys are not census data. The Association of Washington Business represents its members' interests, and its survey results should be read with that context in mind. The sample size, methodology, and field period were not detailed in available reporting.
But the direction of the numbers is hard to dismiss. A double-digit jump in relocation interest in the span of a few months, concentrated among the very taxpayers the new law targets, is a warning sign that serious leaders would investigate rather than laugh off. When nearly three in four business respondents call the state's tax burden a top challenge, that is not a narrative problem. It is a policy signal.
Wilson chose to treat it as spin. She pointed to corporate donations and shelter construction as proof that the business community is on her side. She did not address the survey's findings directly. She did not acknowledge the 11-point jump. She laughed.
Progressive leaders in high-tax jurisdictions have spent years insisting that wealthy residents and employers won't actually leave, right up until they do. California lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census. Illinois has bled population for a decade. New York spent the pandemic watching finance firms relocate operations to Florida and Texas.
The playbook is always the same. Dismiss the warnings. Call the data overblown. Point to some unrelated metric, a U-Haul index, a corporate donation, a ribbon-cutting, and declare that the real story is cooperation, not flight. Then watch the revenue projections come in short.
Washington state just handed its highest earners a 9.9% reason to look at the map. More than half the state's business leaders are already looking. And the mayor of Seattle thinks the whole thing is a joke.
The people packing boxes aren't laughing.