08/19/26 - Current Tax Environment in Washington State pt.1

Well, yeah, one of your notes here says that Washington, for instance, has the highest estate tax in the nation.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, it is true.

And that's really, unfortunately, kind of the current estate tax implications in Washington state is that currently – And I don't want to use numbers all the time, but because this is going to be very specific, I'm going to use numbers here in this show, which is currently Washington state has a $3 million estate tax exemption.

So what does that really mean? So what that means is that to each individual – an estate tax will start if someone has more than $3 million.

So if I have $4 million to my name, then clearly I have over the three.

So the first $3 million would be exempt.

And then the last $1 million in my example would be exposed to a Washington state estate tax.

Now, That tax starts at 10%.

So currently, the low rate of Washington state estate tax at 10% is not the most egregious tax that we have to pay.

For example, if we do capital gains, that's a 15% and can escalate up to 23.6%.

So capital gains are more expensive than the starting rate in Washington.

But the Washington state estate tax does float up to 20 percent.

And that starts with someone who has $8 million or more.

So it's a graduating system.

So it gradually increases taxes.

per million dollars that you have.

Now, a couple of the brackets are skipped.

So it jumps from a 10% to a 15% tax bracket.

So if you have $8 million or more, then Washington State will tax anything above the $8 million at that 20%.

So The current numbers, if someone has a really great business, owns multiple properties, has just simply done well, has received an inheritance.

So a lot of wealth is passed on by parents, by other individuals.

As a matter of fact – Statistically, the generation that is now passing away is going to pass more wealth to the next generation than any time in history.

So what that means is that the parents that are passing away have done very well.

And then their estate is potentially subjected to this Washington state estate tax.