(The Center Square) - Every day seems to provide more evidence that Washington-based businesses are leaving the state or expanding outside the state because of the mounting tax and regulatory burden.
Some of those business leaders were featured during last week's Association of Washington Economic Future Solutions Summit at the Hilton at SeaTac in a panel discussion titled "Economic Reality Check."
Nate Dick is the vice president of TigerStop, a company located in Vancouver, Washington, that manufactures automated stop gauges and material pusher systems that attach to existing machinery.
Dick told the audience the business climate is currently the most challenging they’ve encountered.
“In our 32 years in business, we've never seen all of our costs rising together and this aggressively,” Dick said. “And I'm seeing other businesses, vendors of ours, kind of just getting tired and throwing in the towel. I'm seeing business owners either move out of the state, shut down their business or sell to multinational corporations or venture capital.”
He said when those business leaders leave, it hurts the community.
“These are business leaders who live in their community. These are the people who are sponsoring Little League teams and local events through the Chamber of Commerce," he said.
"And when those people throw in the towel or quit or get bought out, not only is that capital leaving the state, but that's also local leadership that is no longer in that community.”
Kevin Wallace of Wallace Properties was also on the panel and expressed that environmental regulations are impacting his company's ability to remain profitable.
Wallace Properties is a Bellevue-based commercial real estate firm, handling retail, office, industrial and multi-family projects.
“You know, with the CETA [Clean Energy Transformation Act] and CCA [Climate Commitment Act] driving the cost of energy and gas and everything up, it’s putting pressure on what we can charge and what we need to charge for the services,” said Wallace.
“The housing costs are a similar situation where we continue to have a problem with supply. If the goal was 50,000 units a year statewide, we're not anywhere close to that right now. So that's another challenge,” he added.
Wallace told those in attendance he doesn’t like always blaming the government for everything, but believes government is responsible for where things are now.
“I hate to blame government for everything, but I look around this region and we have amazing assets. We really should be doing better than we're doing. If we can look at business as a cow to be milked and not a hog to be slaughtered, we can get back to a point of success,” he said.
Mike Senske, president and CEO of Pearson Packaging, said mounting taxes and the pending income tax are among the greatest reasons for expanding the business into Idaho, instead of Washington.
Pearson Packaging, based in Spokane, designs, engineers, and builds automated end-of-line packaging machinery.
“The state of Washington went from zero to 9.9% in a very short period of time,” said Senske, referring to the newly passed Washington millionaire’s tax. "And the concern we have is as the legislature kind of continues tilting in that direction...it’s going to get worse and worse. And so, we see that as the beginning, not the end.”
Senske said the estate tax is another punishing tax that has their company expanding outside Washington.
“We do not want to find the death of a shareholder driving the liquidation of the company to essentially pay an estate tax. The person who's going to buy a Pearson Packaging system is not going to be engaging in stakeholder capitalism. They're going to be engaged in shareholder-based capital, which is an entirely different animal. Those profits are going to be swept out of the state of Washington. To Chicago, to New York, to LA.”
Senske said the lack of predictability for what is coming next has also turned them off to expanding locally.
“It's the predicted unpredictability we think we're going to see going forward and we've started that process to move as a result of it.”
As reported by The Center Square, AWB’s spring employer survey of more than 400 members found that 24% of were considering moving their business out of Washington, nearly triple what AWB found in their winter 2025 survey just 16 months prior.
In that survey, 18% of AWB members said they were developing a relocation plan and 7% have secured a location out of state. The number of business leaders looking at moving their personal residence out of state was a staggering 55%, up from 44% last quarter.
