Travis Kalanick chose it Dropped California on December 18 for a reason. The Uber co-founder moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, just 14 days before California’s wealth tax deadline, avoiding a potential $180 million hit to his $3.6 billion fortune. He made no secret of the calculation.
“Just to be clear, I moved to Texas on December 18th. I don’t know what’s so specific about December 18th, but let’s just say it’s before January,” Kalanick said in an interview with TPBN.
He joined Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Larry Page, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and PayPal and Founders Fund founder Peter Thiel in a steady parade of wealth leaving the blue states for Florida and Texas. The Democrats have been doing this for years. California, New York, and now Washington State are using the same tax-raising playbook at virtually the same time, and the results are entirely predictable.
In New York City, Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made taxing the wealthy a centerpiece of his administration. He is pushing for an additional 2 percent income tax surcharge for city residents making more than $1 million annually, along with corporate tax increases that he says would raise billions to close a $5.4 billion budget deficit. His ultimatum to Albany is that passing these taxes is the only way to prevent the city from imposing a 9.5% property tax increase on everyone, including the working and middle class he claims to represent.
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Washington Governor Bob Ferguson speaks at a podium in Seattle. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has repeatedly declined to go along, explaining at an event, “I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach.” That admission does not come from someone who sincerely believes that taxing the rich has no consequences. Someone who believed that wouldn’t worry about Palm Beach. Even Hochul understands well what happens to a tax base when people leave. At least in New York she has enough self-awareness to hold the line. Democrats in Washington state don’t do that.
Washington Democrats pushed Senate Bill 6346 through the legislature after an intense 25 hours of floor debate. The bill imposes a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million per year. Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson has promised to sign it.
Former Attorney General Rob McKenna released a legal memo calling the bill unconstitutional, pointing to nearly a century of established precedent. The Democrats already know that strategy depends on it.
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In 1933, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Culliton vs. Chase that income is property under the state constitution. Article VII requires that real estate be taxed at a uniform rate, making a graduated income tax plainly unconstitutional. That statement has been valid for 93 years. Washington voters rejected the income tax measures at the ballot box ten times.
Most recently, in 2010, 38 of 39 provinces reduced taxes for households above $200,000. The legislature’s 2021 capital gains tax only survived judicial review because the far-left Supreme Court twisted itself into a pretzel to absurdly narrowly classify it as an excise tax on a specific transaction. A broad income tax on millionaires is legally separate, and Democrats are using it to force the court’s hand.
That clean decision is the whole ball game. Tax supporters are counting on a state Supreme Court now littered with justices appointed by Democratic governors and backed by liberal advocacy groups. If Culliton falls, income will be formally decoupled from property for the first time in Washington history. The uniformity requirement disappears.
Once that constitutional wall comes down, there’s nothing stopping the Legislature from lowering the threshold from $1 million to $500,000 to $200,000 for anyone receiving a paycheck. The millionaire tax is not the goal. It is the crowbar to enforce income tax on everyone.
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The economic consequences do not await a ruling.
Former Attorney General Rob McKenna released a legal memo calling the bill unconstitutional, pointing to nearly a century of established precedent. The Democrats already know that. Their strategy depends on it.
The director of Bulwark Capital Management told us The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red him leaving the state and taking his business with him. Moment’s CEO said the same thing his company is dumping the state for Wyoming. Starbucks has announced that it will expand its operations in Nashville, Tennessee.
Meanwhile, office vacancy rates in downtown Seattle reached an all-time high of more than 30% in the final months of 2025, a figure that Jon Scholes of the Downtown Seattle Association directly linked to the city’s escalating tax burden. Scholes noted that Amazon has moved thousands of employees to Bellevue and other locations in King County in recent years because of the increasingly aggressive tax environment.
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An independent economic study shows that Washington’s 2025 tax hikes, already the largest in state history, are expected to cut wages by $3.7 billion in 2026 alone. The millionaires tax hasn’t even gone into effect yet. Seattle attorney Joe Wallin, who testified against the bill, warned that some of the bill’s effects will be invisible because new businesses won’t come to Seattle or Washington state in the first place.
Every company that leaves or never arrives is a data point that Washington Democrats will ignore on the way to the courthouse because their tax thirst is unquenchable.
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When Democrats fail to ignore the consequences of their policies, they cause bewilderment every time the wealthy and their corporations head for the exits. Hochul’s commentary on Palm Beach shows that the bewilderment is a performance. Kalanick’s December 18 timestamp tells the rest of the story.
Washington Democrats are deliberately passing a law they know is unconstitutional today because they are betting that a court full of allies will tear down the constitutional barrier tomorrow. The $1 million figure is a political fig leaf. The real agenda is a permanent, broad-based income tax on every Washingtonian, and this is exactly the way they want to get there.
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