The bill amends RCW 82.45.060 to change Washington’s real estate excise tax structure and related procedures. It confirms a tiered excise tax schedule effective January 1, 2020 (1.10% on the portion up to $500,000; 1.28% on the portion between $500,000 and $1,500,000; 2.75% on the portion between $1,500,000 and $3,000,000; and 3.00% on the portion over $3,000,000), and retains a flat 1.28% rate for sales classified as timberland or agricultural land. The prior uniform 1.28% rate applied through December 31, 2019. The amendment also addresses deposit allocations: specified allocations applied from July 1, 2013, through December 31, 2019, and beginning January 1, 2020 collections are to be deposited as provided in RCW 82.45.230. The bill creates procedural requirements for periodically adjusting the tier thresholds and for classification verification. Beginning July 1, 2022, and every fourth year thereafter, the (unnamed) department must adjust the selling-price thresholds using specified CPI or percentage rules, publish updated thresholds by September 1 and make them effective January 1 following publication, round thresholds to the nearest $1,000, and report adjustments to the legislature’s fiscal committees by December 1 of adjustment years. The department must publish guidance to help sellers classify property on the excise tax affidavit; properties with multiple uses must be classified by predominant use. County treasurers are explicitly not responsible for verifying seller classification; the department alone is responsible for verification as part of its audit duties under RCW 82.45.150. This is a statutory amendment changing tax rates, funding deposit procedures, and administrative procedures (threshold adjustments, reporting, guidance, and audit verification). The text repeatedly refers to “the department” but does not identify which state department is intended; the bill also cites other RCWs whose full contents (including the details of deposit rules in RCW 82.45.230 and specific provisions cited in chapter 84.33 and RCW 84.34) are not provided here. The bill was read for the first time on 01/28/25 and referred to the Committee on Finance.

Likely buyers and sellers of higher-priced property will see most of the effect: portions of a sale above certain dollar cutoffs are taxed at higher rates, while sales of timberland or agricultural land remain taxed at the lower 1.28% rate. The law sets a regular, automatic reset of those dollar cutoffs every four years using a shelter-price measure (or a capped percent for the first cutoff), which will tend to limit how many sales get pushed into the higher tax brackets over time. The state department named in the statute will be responsible for doing the adjustments, publishing guidance to help sellers classify properties, and auditing classifications, and county treasurers are explicitly not responsible for verifying seller classifications, shifting administrative and audit responsibility (and related compliance risk) away from counties to the department; governmental entities that acquire land could qualify as timberland under specific conditions and thus be taxed at the lower rate. The bill also changes where the tax money goes starting January 1, 2020 by referencing deposit rules in RCW 82.45.230, but the extracted text does not show those deposit details, so the precise impact on specific accounts or local funding flows after 2020 is unclear. The draft also repeatedly refers to “the department” without naming which agency must carry out the new duties, and it cites other statutory provisions whose content is not included here, so some administrative and compliance effects depend on those missing details.