It just got a little more expensive to be filthy rich in Washington. Boo-hoo | Opinion

Break out the tissues and tiny violins. Or, if it’s more your style, pour one out for your wealthy friend’s summer home.

On Friday, in an objectively stunning decision, the Washington state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state’s controversial capital gains tax. Given Washington’s long, stubborn history of regressive taxation, proponents of the tax (and by that I mean almost exclusively Democrats) described the court’s decision as a dawning of a new day.

The 7-2 ruling reversed a Douglas County Superior Court decision from 2022 that found the tax unconstitutional.

More importantly, it marked a major step toward righting “an upside-down tax structure where low-income Washingtonians ultimately expend a much larger share of their income in taxes than our wealthiest residents,” as Governor Jay Inslee put it.

There’s just one catch: A lot of people are in no mood to celebrate, as it turns out, above and beyond the roughly 8,000 well-to-do Washington residents who will actually have to pay a capital gains tax. Whether they’re partisan warriors hopped up on right-wing talking points or Reagan Era dreamers still keen on trickle-down economics, a tax expected to bring in $500 million a year for criminally underfunded things like education and childcare — that would impact far less than 1% of state residents — has attracted predictable opposition from many who would never pay a cent.

Since it was passed by the Legislature in 2021, the tax, which would collect 7% on profits exceeding $250,000 from the sale of things like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, has been hotly contested. And admittedly, some who’ve sought to poke holes in the legal argument behind the capital gains effort — namely, that it’s an excise tax, and not a tax on income or a property — have reasonable cases to make. It was no surprise that, once they shook the disbelief Friday, there was quick talk of taking the matter to U.S. Supreme Court. From the beginning, Washington’s capital gains tax was designed by progressives to thread a delicate legal and political needle, and the ground they stood on along the way rarely seemed firm.

Still, who cares? I mean, really. Who cares?

Legal arguments are fun and all. But if you’re clinging to dusty precedents and semantics in defense of a system that benefits the wealthy at the clear expense of everyone else, that’s not constitutional righteousness — it’s just deluded indifference. Or maybe something worse.

For decades, Washington has suffered from a wildly unfair tax code, and for just as long, any reasonable attempt to fix it — most notably by enacting a state income tax — has been fought and thwarted every step of the way, largely by the same forces that now oppose capital gains. Is that just the way it goes with taxes? I suppose. Was dissenting state Supreme Court Judge Sheryl Gordon McCloud correct when she wrote that rewriting the state’s “regressive tax structure” is a question best left up to the Legislature, the voters and, ultimately, a change to the state constitution? Maybe, at least in the abstract.

But in practice? That’s just a recipe for more of the same, and everyone knows it. It’s the dysfunctional civic feedback loop we’ve been stuck in since time immemorial — the reason our schools are underfunded, the reason we have no social safety net, and the reason we live in a place where obscene wealth explodes all around us and yet so many of us are unable to catch a break.

So did the state Supreme Court get it right on Friday, under a strict reading of the law? I have no idea. And besides, it’s a matter that seems destined to be debated by lawyers and academics for years to come anyway. Let them have their fun.

Here’s what I do know, and what I suspect even a few staunch opponents of the tax know, too, somewhere deep down:

Washington’s tax system has long been broken, and anything that makes it even slightly less slanted and cruel is overdue progress, however it’s achieved. You can only cling to the past for so long, and eventually, one way or another, fairness and decency will prevail.

In that regard, Friday’s capital gains ruling was good news.

Unless, of course, you’re super wealthy, in which case you’ll probably be just fine.