WA’s rich are leaving? Another tax on wealth smashes records by tripling the amount coming in from last year

“This morning we got the updated numbers for fiscal year 2026 for capital gains … it came in at $1.5 billion,” economist Dave Reich told state lawmakers earlier this month. “So a very significant increase, quite a bit above our forecast from what we had before.”

This is understating things by a fair bit. Last year this tax raised $584 million. So the revenue, which is a preliminary figure pending delayed returns, appears to have nearly tripled in one year. It quadrupled from the year before that.

This is not what the critics of tax-the-rich schemes said should happen. They predicted tax proceeds would deteriorate as rich people moved away or structured their finances to avoid paying it.