The bill creates a new regulatory framework for "data brokers" and a new monthly severance tax on data brokering. It establishes a registration requirement, beginning January 1, 2026, for business entities that engage in data brokering (with specified federal-law-based exclusions for consumer reporting agencies and certain financial institutions). Registered data brokers must annually register with the Washington State Department of Licensing, provide identifying information, pay a department-set fee sufficient to cover administration, and file a detailed declaration about the types and amounts of brokered personal data they handle, security measures, use of geolocation and consumer health data, opt-out and authorization processes. The Department must approve registrations that meet requirements, publish registration information online, may adopt rules, and must immediately suspend an individual registrant’s registration upon DSHS certification of support-order noncompliance, with automatic reissuance upon DSHS release if other reinstatement requirements are met. The Uniform Regulation of Business and Professions Act governs unregistered practice, issuance/denial of registration, and discipline under this chapter. The act also creates a new monthly severance tax on data brokering that takes effect January 1, 2027 for the tax provisions. The tax is imposed on registered data brokers and is calculated based on the number of Washington "resident individuals" for whom the broker collects brokered personal data during a month, using a tiered rate schedule (per-resident rates increasing by tier). A rebuttable presumption treats persons with a Washington home or mailing address or a Washington IP address as resident individuals. Business entities with common ownership as defined in 26 U.S.C. §1563(a) are treated as a single taxpayer and jointly and severally liable; single-member LLCs are treated as the single member for chapter purposes. Data brokers must keep records required by the department, file monthly returns until they report no tax liability for 12 consecutive months, and the department may adopt rules and estimate methodologies for administration; chapter 82.32 RCW applies to administration of the tax sections. The bill creates new chapters in Title 19 RCW (sections 2–7) and Title 82 RCW (sections 9–12) and references several existing statutes for fee deposit (RCW 43.24.150), fee setting (RCW 43.24.086), suspension for support-order noncompliance (RCW 74.20A.320), and federal law exclusions (Fair Credit Reporting Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act). Important details are incomplete or unclear in the provided text: an amendment to RCW 18.235.020 is truncated, the exact new chapter number in Title 19 is shown as "chapter 19.--RCW," the section reference for the registration requirement is partially garbled, the first tier of the tax table is formatted unclearly, and the full content of sections 2–7 is not present.

If enacted, companies that buy, sell, or otherwise organize personal information about Washington residents will need to register with the Department of Licensing beginning January 1, 2026, provide detailed declarations about the kinds of data and how many Washington residents are covered, pay a department-set fee to cover administration, and will be publicly listed; the Department takes on new administrative and rulemaking duties funded by those fees, and individual registrants can be immediately suspended for support‑order noncompliance per DSHS certification. The rule list also makes certain professional licensing boards able to discipline under the new chapter, so affected businesses face new disclosure, licensing, and compliance responsibilities and public visibility of their practices. Starting January 1, 2027, those same data brokers will also face a new monthly severance tax based on how many Washington “resident individuals” they hold brokered personal data on, taxed under a tiered per‑person schedule and requiring monthly returns and recordkeeping until they report no liability for 12 consecutive months; businesses with common ownership are treated as one taxpayer and jointly liable, and a Washington address or IP can be presumed to make a person a resident for tax purposes, which may increase the number of counted records and therefore costs. The exact tax table entries for the first tier and some chapter and section details are unclear from the provided text, so the precise per‑person charges and some implementation mechanics cannot be confirmed here.