Senate Bill 5819 amends RCW 82.04.050 by changing definitions used to determine what constitutes a "sale at retail" or "retail sale." The bill expressly adds "temporary staffing services" to those definitions and explicitly includes "providing workers as paid protestors to any person, business, or other entity for limited periods of time to supplement or support a public protest on a contract or for fee basis" within that term. The amendment also revises and clarifies numerous related definitions and inclusions/exclusions in the retail-sale rules, including definitions for advertising services, janitorial services, temporary staffing services, software and digital goods access, extended warranties, and charges related to athletic or fitness facilities and many recreational or entertainment activities. This is primarily a definitional and taxability change to existing law, not a criminal or penalty provision: it alters which services and charges are treated as retail sales for tax purposes and specifies inclusions and exclusions (for example, certain hospital services are excluded from the temporary staffing definition; some charges by educational institutions or for specified day camps are not retail sales; various federal, municipal, and transit-related services are excluded). It affects taxpayers and service providers such as temporary staffing firms (including those that provide paid protestors), advertisers and digital service providers, website developers, IT and security service providers, hotels and lodging, and regional transit authorities among others. The bill was prefiled 12/01/25, read for the first time 01/12/26, and referred to the Senate Committee on Ways & Means. The extracted text is incomplete: portions of several subsections end mid-sentence, subsection (7) referenced for "extended warranty" is not included, and other possible amendments outside RCW 82.04.050 are not shown, so a full accounting of all changes cannot be determined from the provided material.

If enacted, the bill would make companies that supply workers as paid protestors fall squarely under the law’s definition of “temporary staffing services” for purposes of retail-sale rules, which means those providers — and anyone contracting to hire paid protestors — will likely face sales tax obligations on those fees and the related responsibility to collect and remit tax. Hospitals licensed under the cited chapters remain excluded, but staffing firms, their clients, and small operators that run protests for a fee should expect higher costs, new accounting and compliance duties, and a greater risk of audits or penalties if they do not comply. The bill also clarifies many other items treated as retail sales or not — for example, how charges for athletic and fitness facility services, software and digital goods, advertising, janitorial work, transit maintenance, and recreational admissions are handled — so businesses in those sectors may see changes in which charges are taxable. The extracted text is incomplete, so the full scope, precise tax treatments, and any implementation or transition details are unclear from the facts provided.