This is not a fire drill:

Washington state is on the threshold of forfeiting its status as one of the nine states in America without an income tax. The state’s constitutional prohibition of income taxes is the one policy attraction of this deep blue state, and it compensates for doing just about everything else wrong economically.

Now, lawmakers are perilously close to throwing that competitive advantage away with a proposed 9.9% income tax on the state’s 30,000 millionaires. Overnight the state would go from the lowest income tax state in the nation to the 5th highest.

The lawmakers are said to be “hammering out the final details.” Governor Bob Ferguson says he will sign the bill if it gets to his desk. Some of the Senate Democrats have worried that this income tax will motivate the rich to abandon the state and hurt the state economy.

Gee, ya think? We can predict with a 99.9% degree of certainty that there won’t be anywhere near 30,000 millionaires to tax if this idea becomes law.

Our friends at the Washington Policy Institute say the tax is “clearly unconstitutional.” Alas, that may not stop the Dems – or the state Supreme Court, which allowed the state’s capital gains tax to stand in 2023.