{"id":238399,"date":"2025-09-19T07:40:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238399\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T07:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:40:16","slug":"watch-association-of-washington-business-lays-out-its-2026-legislative-priorities-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/238399\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: Association of Washington Business lays out its 2026 legislative priorities | Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Center Square) \u2013 The Association of Washington Business, the\u00a0oldest and largest statewide organization of its kind, has set its priorities for next year\u2019s legislative session at the group\u2019s ongoing 2025 Policy Summit<\/strong><\/a> at the Davenport Grant Hotel in Spokane. \u00a0<\/p>\n

AWB Government Affairs Director Emily Wittman told those in attendance Wednesday \u2013 including AWB members, employers, business leaders, and lawmakers \u2013 that AWB will largely focus on health care policy in the upcoming session. She focuses on education, workforce, child care, health care, and federal affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just can\u2019t emphasize enough the financial crisis that our health care system is in, and especially our hospitals that are in Washington state,\u201d she said. \u201cWe saw a significant tax increase with taxes applied to hospitals. \u201c<\/p>\n

According to Wittman, the new advanced computing charge that will take effect next year is another blow to the health care industry.<\/p>\n

Beginning Jan. 1, 2026, Washington will increase its business and occupation advanced computing surcharge more than sixfold, from 1.22% to 7.5%. Passed as part of House Bill 2081<\/strong><\/a> during this year\u2019s legislative session, the new law also dramatically increases the annual tax cap and broadens the definition of affected businesses<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve\u00a0found\u00a0out\u00a0that\u00a0a\u00a0lot\u00a0of\u00a0folks\u00a0in\u00a0our\u00a0system\u00a0and\u00a0healthcare\u00a0pay\u00a0the\u00a0advanced\u00a0computing\u00a0surcharge,\u201d Wittman said.<\/p>\n

Wittman said rate increases in the individual healthcare market are hurting employees and their employers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Office\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Insurance\u00a0Commissioner\u00a0approved\u00a0a\u00a021% increase<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0individual\u00a0health care\u00a0market,\u201d she said. \u201cSeeing that the average increase for employer-sponsored healthcare is like 6.5%. You want to be providing these benefits for employees, but it\u2019s getting pretty dire as far as what you\u2019re paying out of pocket for your premiums and what employers are asked to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said AWB will provide lawmakers with a list of burdensome regulations in hopes of\u00a0decreasing\u00a0the\u00a0growth\u00a0in health care costs.<\/p>\n

Max Martin \u2013 AWB government affairs director for artificial intelligence, technology, and tax and fiscal policy \u2013 mentioned Comcast’s recently filed lawsuit<\/strong><\/a>, which aims to block a new law imposing a sales tax on digital advertising services.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Max Martin, Gov’t Affairs Director for the Association of Washington Business (AWB) at today’s AWB 2025 Policy Summit discussing 2026 legislative priorities<\/p>\n

Source: TVW<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was eye-opening, to say the least,\u201d he said. \u201cTo see a nearly $9.4 billion revenue package come together so quickly and so late in session and include things like the single largest tax increase in state history. And it also includes one of the more significant shifts in sales tax policies that we’ve seen in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

He suggested that Senate Bill 5814<\/strong><\/a> will likely be amended during the 2026 session because of the lawsuit and other businesses’ opposition.<\/p>\n

SB 5814, enacted this year,\u00a0expands the state’s retail sales tax to cover many services, including information technology services, advertising, custom software, temporary staffing, and security services, effective Oct 1. It also extends the \u201cother tobacco products tax\u201d to include synthetic nicotine products starting Jan. 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been in the crosshairs recently with the lawsuit coming. I think it’s significant. It\u2019s challenging this policy on the grounds of violating the Internet Tax Freedom Act by taxing digital advertising services while also carving out traditional offline media,\u201d Martin added.<\/p>\n

He added that Democratic budget writers relied heavily on taxes from SB 5814 to craft the 2025 budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat’s really keeping me up at night right now, especially seeing what’s happening with this bill, is okay, say that portion comes out. What’s the financial hit going to look like? Department of Revenue has recently come out saying that that portion of the bill would generate $475 million over four years, and we used that money to build this most recent budget,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

AWB\u2019s summit concludes on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2013 The Association of Washington Business, the\u00a0oldest and largest statewide organization of its kind, has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":238400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[127734,127730,127729,127731,127733,210,1141,3270,127732,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-238399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-2026-legislative-session","9":"tag-advanced-computing-surcharge","10":"tag-association-of-washington-business","11":"tag-bo-taxes","12":"tag-digital-advertising-tax","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-health-care","15":"tag-health-care-costs","16":"tag-health-insurance-rate-increase","17":"tag-healthcare","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115229833485720457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}