Washington State

Overview

Washington State's constitution bars a classic land value tax: its uniformity clause prohibits taxing land and buildings (improvements) at different rates within the same class of property, the same constitutional obstacle that historically blocked Seattle from adopting one.[1] In 2026, Washington nonetheless became a live site of Georgist policy activity at two levels — a legal-feasibility case for a workaround, and city-level politics in Spokane and Seattle — even though, unlike New York, Virginia, and Kentucky in the same year, no Washington enabling bill passed the legislature in 2026.

Legal Feasibility: A Building-Exemption Workaround

A June 2026 Sightline Institute analysis, "Yes, a Land Value Tax Is Possible in Washington State" (also carried on the Progress and Poverty Substack), argues the uniformity clause does not foreclose the effect of a land value tax, only the mechanism of taxing land and buildings at literally different rates.[1] Its proposed workaround: exempt a portion of assessed building value from property tax entirely, then raise the overall levy rate to hold total revenue constant — a revenue-neutral shift that moves the tax burden toward land without setting two different rates.[1]

The legislative vehicle for this idea is the Vibrant Cities Act, developed by Spokane's local elected officials working with the Center for Land Economics and Sightline Institute, and carried by State Representative Natasha Hill (D-Spokane). It would let individual Washington cities opt in to the building-exemption model. The bill was not sufficiently developed to run in the 2026 legislative session; its sponsors and partner organizations describe continued work toward a 2027 reintroduction.[1] As of mid-2026, no Washington enabling legislation for this model has passed.

Spokane: A Council Member's Pilot Push

Spokane City Council member Kitty Klitzke has been the leading local advocate, framing the reform around the Georgist contrast between idle land and productive use — a modern echo of the 1914 "Everybody works but the empty lot" billboard campaign that Georgist activist Fay Lewis ran on a vacant Rockford, Illinois lot.[2] The Spokane City Council voted to add the "Universal Building Exemption" concept to its state legislative priorities, asking Olympia lawmakers to authorize a city pilot.[2]

In June 2026 the Center for Land Economics published a parcel-level analysis modeling Klitzke's proposed design — a "50+50" exemption (subtract $50,000 from a building's assessed value, then halve what remains, with a floor of zero) — against Spokane's actual assessment roll, in a report titled "Taxing Land, Not Homes: A Revenue-Neutral Path to Unlock Spokane's Underused Land."[3][4] Its central findings, assuming adoption by the city, library, parks, and school-district levies together: the median single-family home's tax bill would fall by roughly 4% (about $82/year); small (2–4 unit) buildings would see roughly a 9.5% reduction; buildings of five or more units would fall by 14% or more; and vacant lots and surface parking would see median increases exceeding 100% (more than doubling), with the effect concentrated on the roughly $917 million (an estimated 11% of the city's non-exempt land value) sitting on underused downtown and high-demand parcels.[3][4] The report frames the reform as progressive, with larger median cuts in lower-income neighborhoods than higher-income ones, while acknowledging that some individual downtown parcels — particularly prime vacant or underbuilt lots — would see bills rise by thousands of dollars.[3][4] This is the same Center for Land Economics whose parallel South Bend and Princeton parcel simulations are covered on the wiki's Miller & Hoskins college-town LVT page; as with those reports, it is an advocacy-institute simulation, not independent or peer-reviewed research, and its figures are cited here as the modelers' own analysis rather than as confirmed real-world outcomes.

Status: the proposal has not been adopted or even formally introduced as passable state legislation — it requires the Vibrant Cities Act (or equivalent) to pass in Olympia first, which did not happen in the 2026 session. Klitzke has said the idea saw "little traction" in the prior session; report author Greg Miller has suggested 2026's Virginia and Kentucky enablement wins (see The 2026 State Land Value Tax Enablement Wave) could build momentum toward a 2027 attempt.[4]

Seattle: Mayor Katie Wilson's Stated Pursuit

Katie B. Wilson, co-founder of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell in the November 2025 Seattle mayoral election and took office on January 1, 2026.[5] During her 2025 campaign, Wilson's published "Progressive Revenue" platform — a menu that also included a local capital-gains tax, an expanded JumpStart payroll-expense tax, a vacancy tax, and a local estate tax, among others — committed explicitly to a land value tax: "under my leadership Seattle will join Spokane in advocating for a Land Value Tax as an alternative option to the property tax, that would also create an incentive to put rundown properties to better use."[6]

This is a stated policy priority carried into office, not an enacted or even introduced city or state measure. Seattle, like every other Washington city, would need the state's uniformity clause addressed — via the Vibrant Cities Act or similar enabling legislation — before it could adopt any building-exemption-style land value tax; as of mid-2026 no such state authorization exists. [VERIFY: whether Wilson's office has taken any further, post-inauguration action on this commitment — e.g., a formal city legislative-agenda item or public support for the Vibrant Cities Act — beyond the campaign-platform statement and reported "join Spokane" framing; this page reflects the sources located as of 2026-07-26.]

Independent of Wilson's platform, a June 2026 op-ed in The Urbanist (a Seattle-based urbanist outlet) by Seattle cartographer Aaron Schechter argued the city's own property tax — over 22% of Seattle's revenue in 2025 — already taxes improvements far more heavily than land (an example cited: a gas station pays $0.23 in improvement tax per dollar of land tax versus $2.14 for an apartment building), and proposed a 50-year phased shift of the tax weight from buildings to land as a homegrown case for the same reform.[7]

Honest Limits

No Washington jurisdiction currently has legal authority to levy a land value tax. The state's uniformity clause remains in force; the Vibrant Cities Act did not advance in the 2026 legislative session and is aimed at 2027 at the earliest; Spokane's reform requires that state action first, and its own city council has only added the idea to a priorities list, not adopted a design; and Seattle's mayor has stated an intent to pursue LVT but has not yet secured — and cannot unilaterally create — the state authorization it would require. Washington's 2026 activity is genuine and coordinated across two cities, but it remains at an earlier stage than New York, Virginia, or Kentucky's 2026 enablement laws.

See Also

• The 2026 State Land Value Tax Enablement Wave (New York, Virginia, Kentucky) — the three states that passed enabling legislation in the same year Washington's push remained at the proposal stage
• Center for Land Economics — authored the Spokane parcel study and co-developed the Vibrant Cities Act model
• Miller & Hoskins — College-Town Land Value Tax Shift Simulations — the same organization's comparable parcel-shift simulations for South Bend, IN and Princeton, NJ
• Split-Rate Taxation — the design Washington's building-exemption model is engineered to replicate under a uniformity-clause constraint
• United States — the wiki's US hub page

Sources

1. Sightline Institute, "Yes, a Land Value Tax Is Possible in Washington State" (3 June 2026); cross-posted under the same title on the Progress and Poverty Substack. sightline.org · progressandpoverty.substack.com — used for the uniformity-clause barrier, the building-exemption workaround design, the Vibrant Cities Act, Rep. Natasha Hill's role, and the bill's 2026-not-ready / 2027-target status.
2. Emry Dinman, "'Everybody works but the empty lot': Some Spokane leaders eye property tax reform to promote building," The Spokesman-Review, 5 January 2026. spokesman.com — used for Kitty Klitzke's role initiating the reform, the City Council's legislative-priorities vote, and the 1914 Fay Lewis "everybody works but the empty lot" Rockford, Illinois billboard campaign as historical framing.
3. Center for Land Economics, "Taxing Land, Not Homes: A Revenue-Neutral Path to Unlock Spokane's Underused Land" (June 2026). landeconomics.org/reports/spokane-report — used for the "50+50" exemption design, the per-property-type tax-change figures, the $917 million / 11% underused-land-value estimate, and the progressivity framing.
4. Emry Dinman, "Most Spokane homeowners would pay less tax under reform proposal. Here's who would pay more," The Spokesman-Review, 4 June 2026. spokesman.com — used for reporting the Center for Land Economics figures in context, Klitzke's "50+50" framing and "little traction" comment, and Greg Miller's remark linking Spokane's prospects to Virginia and Kentucky's 2026 wins.
5. "What to know about Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson," Axios, 14 November 2025; Ballotpedia, "Katie Wilson (Washington)" — used for Wilson's defeat of incumbent Bruce Harrell in the November 2025 general election and her January 1, 2026 inauguration as Seattle's mayor. axios.com · ballotpedia.org
6. Katie Wilson for Seattle (campaign site), "Progressive Revenue." wilsonforseattle.com/progressiverevenue — used for the direct quote committing Seattle to "join Spokane in advocating for a Land Value Tax," and the list of other progressive-revenue proposals on the same platform (capital gains, payroll expense, vacancy, estate taxes, etc.). Referenced by the task alongside Wilson's official Bluesky account (bsky.app/profile/mayorofseattle.bsky.social), which could not be independently fetched this session; the quote is verified directly against this campaign-site page.
7. Aaron Schechter, "Op-Ed: The Case for Shifting to a Land Value Tax," The Urbanist, 7 June 2026. theurbanist.org — used for the Seattle property-tax-revenue share, the gas-station-vs-apartment improvement-tax disparity, and the proposed 50-year phased land/building tax-weight shift (advocacy op-ed, attributed).