Microsoft president bashes WA taxes, saying they are ‘driving people and jobs away’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Microsoft President Brad Smith criticized Washington’s 2025 tax increases at WPC event.
- Smith warned new taxes could drive jobs and investment out of Washington state.
- Business groups had urged lawmakers to oppose tax hikes; some firms purportedly want to relocate.
Microsoft President Brad Smith delivered a scathing critique of new taxes passed by the Washington state Legislature while speaking at an event in September.
The comments from Smith came at the Sept. 11 annual policy dinner hosted by the Washington Policy Center (WPC), a pro-business think tank that has lambasted the state’s recent tax hikes.
Addressing the crowd, Smith said that he’s met with lawmakers in Olympia who haven’t figured out that the legislation they’re pursuing has been tried and failed elsewhere.
“Or they’re not willing to consider not just the possibility — but now the reality — that the taxes they’re enacting are driving people and jobs away,” Smith said in a video of his speech posted to YouTube.
This spring, Smith joined executives from dozens of other businesses in signing a letter that urged state lawmakers to refrain from increasing taxes. But the Democratic majority ultimately passed, and Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law, a budget featuring the largest tax increase in state history.
While corporate kingpins warn that the state’s tax policies could weaken Washington’s economy, progressives contend that such businesses are just being greedy.
Washington business advocacy organizations such as the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce have underscored concerns that the state could lose good-paying jobs. The spring 2025 survey from the Association of Washington Business found that 12% of businesses reported they want to move out of the state, with 61% citing taxes as the primary reason.
Smith kicked off his WPC talk by condemning the recent killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk before turning to state business.
The good news, according to Smith: a proposed payroll tax and wealth tax ultimately failed to reach Ferguson’s desk.
And the bad? The state Legislature green-lit new business and occupation, capital gains and gas taxes, Smith noted. He especially took issue with the new top estate tax rate, which — at 35% — he said was far higher than competing states. That tax only reaches 20% in Hawaii, where there’s “wonderful weather and beaches.”
“Look: If you’re going to charge a higher price, you better offer a better product,” Smith said. “I love living here, but that takes a little bit of hubris.”
Smith shared similar thoughts at the Seattle Metro Chamber’s 143rd annual meeting on Sept. 9. The Microsoft leader encouraged nonprofits and public institutions to rally behind their corporate benefactors.
The business community needs to consider the realization that “there’s no cavalry coming,” he said.
“We need to use our voice to help the legislators in Olympia understand that if we’re going to continue to prosper here, invest here, we need the kind of state policies that make it possible to stay here and to keep and grow jobs here,” Smith said.
Earlier this year, Microsoft reportedly pledged $1 million to the new Washington Coalition for Responsible Taxes and Spending political action committee.
Making a fairer tax code in WA
Throughout the 2025 legislative session, Democratic budget writers noted that the state has one of the nation’s most regressive tax structures.
State Sen. Noel Frame, vice chair for finance of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, previously defended Democrats’ revenue proposals as a path to ensuring the state’s tax code is more fair.
“ We need to think through having more progressive tools rather than doubling down on our existing regressive tax code …,” the Seattle lawmaker said, according to KUOW. “We’re doing that instead of going back to the same working people and small businesses that the current tax code is overly reliant on.”
Treasure Mackley, executive director of Invest in Washington Now, doubts that Smith is interested in helping the state’s economy. Otherwise his company wouldn’t have laid off some 15,000 workers, she told McClatchy in an emailed statement.
While working people are getting kicked off their health insurance and losing jobs, she said, Smith — whose total compensation reportedly exceeded $20 million in fiscal 2024 — gripes that the state “isn’t generous enough to multi-millionaires and billionaires like him.”
“This oblivious rhetoric is one reason why support in Washington for taxes that make the few pay what they truly owe is at an all time high,” Mackley said.
Still, Republican lawmakers have sounded the alarm about a looming “capital flight” in response to the majority party’s tax-the-rich aims.
In a December interview, the House Republican budget lead, state Rep. Travis Couture of Allyn, pointed to the exit of Amazon titan Jeff Bezos after the passage of Washington state’s capital gains tax.
Microsoft leads charge against more taxes
Smith’s tax stance is an apparent departure from the ethos of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who’s voiced support for higher taxes for the rich.
His father, Bill Gates Sr., even advocated for progressive taxation and social equity by promoting the idea that wealthy individuals should pay more taxes to support public services and the community. He chaired the 2002 Washington State Tax Structure Study Committee, which recommended a progressive income tax, and was a spokesperson for Initiative 1098 in 2010, a ballot initiative to enact a state income tax on high earners in Washington. He also championed the state estate tax.
During Smith’s WPC speech, he said that the U.S. operates like a three-legged stool, with a public, private and nonprofit sector. The state’s biggest problem, in his view, is that the public sector “is on a path that is starving the private sector in order to grow the government.” The right balance needs to be struck, he said.
Smith left the audience with a call to action to “build the coalition we need, elect the leaders that are required in Olympia, be a business community that uses its voice.”
“And by gosh, by golly,” he said, “we at Microsoft will help you do that.”
This story was originally published September 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
.jpg)