State wealth tax proposals are active in at least seven states — California, New York, Washington, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, and Rhode Island — but no state has actually enacted one. Every bill introduced so far has stalled in committee, been reintroduced in a later session, or shifted to a ballot initiative. The proposals differ in structure and threshold, but they share a target: the accumulated assets of the wealthiest residents rather than their annual income.
What These Bills Actually Tax
A regular income tax reaches money as you earn it. A wealth tax reaches money you already have. In most of the state proposals, the tax base is a resident’s total net worth, or at least the value of their financial assets, minus debts. Publicly traded stocks and bonds are simple to value. Private businesses, partnership stakes, and complex instruments are not, and that difficulty runs through every debate about enforcement.
The bills set high exclusion thresholds so only the wealthiest residents would owe anything. Depending on the state, the floor ranges from $20 million to $1 billion. Rates are modest by income-tax standards, typically 1% to 1.5% of net worth above the threshold. Because the tax applies to the entire stock of qualifying wealth each year, though, the effective bite compounds. A billionaire owing 1% annually on assets growing at 7% loses a much larger share of real returns than the headline rate suggests.
California
California has pushed hardest, and lost hardest. Assembly Bill 259, introduced in 2023, would have imposed a 1.5% annual tax on worldwide net worth above $1 billion for tax years 2024 and 2025. Starting in 2026, the threshold would have dropped to $50 million at a 1% base rate, with a 0.5% surtax above $1 billion.1California Legislative Information. California Assembly Bill 259 – Wealth Tax: False Claims Act
The bill also reached people who left the state. Former residents who had been subject to the wealth tax would owe a declining fraction of the tax for several years after departure, calculated on a four-year lookback.2Franchise Tax Board. AB 259 Bill Analysis AB 259 died in committee in early 2024 after opposition from the governor, business groups, and constitutional concerns about taxing former residents.
California proponents then pivoted to a ballot measure. The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of the state’s billionaires. It is currently collecting signatures.
New York
New York took a different route. Rather than taxing net worth directly, Senate Bill 1570 would require residents with net assets of $1 billion or more to treat every asset as if it were sold at fair market value on the last day of each tax year. Any resulting net gains would be included in taxable income at the state’s existing rates.3New York State Senate. NY State Senate Bill 2023-S1570
The taxable amount in any year is capped at one-quarter of net assets above $1 billion. Losses that exceed gains carry forward indefinitely. The definition of “assets” reaches far, covering property held by the taxpayer’s spouse, minor children, trusts where the taxpayer is a beneficiary, and gifts made within the prior five years.
S1570 remained in the Senate Budget and Revenue Committee through 2024. The concept was reintroduced in the 2025 session as Assembly Bill 3632, with the same mark-to-market structure and updated dates, and referred to Ways and Means.4New York State Senate. NY State Assembly Bill 2025-A3632 Neither version has reached a floor vote.
Washington
Washington has no income tax, so its proposals are structured as property taxes on financial intangible assets. House Bill 1473, introduced in 2023, would impose a 1% annual tax on financial intangible assets valued above $250 million by narrowing the state’s existing blanket exemption for those assets.5Washington State Legislature. Washington House Bill 1473
The bill defined “financial intangible assets” as cash, stocks, bonds, commodities contracts, and ownership interests in partnerships and S-corporations. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights were explicitly exempted. Cryptocurrency was not mentioned in either the bill text or the legislative analysis.6Washington State Legislature. HB 1473 Bill Analysis
HB 1473 was reintroduced but has not advanced. In the 2025-26 session, legislators introduced Senate Bill 5797 along similar lines, with revenues earmarked for public schools.7Washington State Legislature. SB 5797 – 2025-26 The state Supreme Court’s 2023 decision upholding a 7% tax on realized capital gains above $250,000 turned on treating that tax as an excise on a transaction rather than a property tax on gains.8Washington Courts. Quinn v. State A tax on holdings rather than transactions would face the state’s property tax restrictions directly.
Hawaii
Hawaii’s proposal has moved further than most. Senate Bill 313 passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in early 2025. It would impose a 1% tax on individual assets above $20 million, and unlike most state proposals, it sweeps in real estate, stocks, bonds, cash, art, and collectibles rather than limiting the base to financial intangibles.9Hawaii Senate Majority. Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Wealth Asset Tax Bill for Assets Above $20 Million
The committee amended the bill so the tax would be assessed every three years rather than annually. Taxpayers would report assets to the Department of Taxation alongside their state income tax filings. If enacted, the tax would not take effect until after December 31, 2029. Hawaii’s $20 million threshold is the lowest among current proposals and would reach a wider pool of taxpayers than bills targeting only billionaires.
Illinois, Minnesota, and Rhode Island
Three more states have bills in earlier stages.
Illinois Senate Bill 3376, introduced in early 2026, would apply a mark-to-market regime to annual unrealized gains of residents with net assets over $1 billion. The state constitution requires a flat income tax rate, and opponents argue that taxing only billionaires’ unrealized gains cannot survive that mandate.
Minnesota House File 4616, introduced in March 2026, would impose a 1% annual tax on taxable wealth exceeding $10 million, covering all real and personal property located within the state minus debts. Its effective date is retroactive to tax years beginning after December 31, 2025.
Rhode Island’s “Fair Share Tax Package” includes a 1% wealth tax on residents’ worldwide financial assets above $25 million, excluding real estate and retirement accounts.
The Multistate Coalition
These bills did not appear in isolation. They emerged from a coordinated coalition of legislators from at least nine states, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Washington. The logic behind coordination is simple. If one state acts alone, the wealthiest residents can move. If several act together, the exits narrow. So far, none of the coalition states have passed a wealth tax, and most proposals remain in early committee stages.
Why Every Proposal Has Stalled
The obstacles fall into two categories: constitutional and practical.
Constitutional Questions After Moore
The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Moore v. United States upheld a one-time federal tax on undistributed earnings of foreign corporations owned by American shareholders, but the majority explicitly refused to decide whether the Constitution requires income to be “realized” before it can be taxed. The Court noted that a hypothetical tax on an individual’s holdings or net worth “might be considered a tax on property, not income,” and called those “potential issues for another day.”10Supreme Court of the United States. Moore v. United States (06/20/2024) At least four justices signaled that realization should be required. That reading complicates mark-to-market proposals like New York’s and puts pure net-worth taxes on shakier footing still, because they may be classified as property taxes rather than income taxes.
State Constitutional Ceilings
Many state constitutions require uniform taxation of the same class of property. Washington’s constitution caps regular property tax levies at $10 per $1,000 of assessed value, effectively 1%.11Washington State Legislature. Understanding Washington’s Property Tax A new wealth tax structured as a property tax on financial assets could push some taxpayers above that ceiling once combined with existing property taxes. Washington’s drafters have tried to frame the bills as narrowing an exemption rather than creating a new tax, but that framing is untested in court. Illinois faces its flat-rate mandate. Hawaii’s inclusion of real estate raises overlap questions with local property tax.
Interstate Commerce and Due Process
Under the four-part test from Complete Auto Transit v. Brady, a state tax must connect substantially to the taxing state, be fairly apportioned, not discriminate against interstate commerce, and relate fairly to services the state provides.12Constitution Annotated. Apportionment Prong of Complete Auto Test for Taxes on Interstate Commerce Wealth taxes reaching worldwide assets run into apportionment problems immediately: if a California resident owns stock in a Delaware-incorporated company traded in New York and held through a Texas broker, more than one state may claim jurisdiction. The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment adds a requirement of a meaningful connection between the taxing state and the property. Exit tax provisions that follow former residents for years after they leave face the hardest due process challenge, because the state’s connection to the taxpayer thins with time.
Valuation and Administration
Even a wealth tax that survives constitutional review is hard to run. Public securities have closing prices. Private companies, partnership interests, art, and collectibles do not, and every valuation dispute becomes a fight between the taxpayer’s appraiser and the state’s auditor. State revenue departments generally have no experience valuing complex financial structures at this scale, and building that capability takes years. Exemptions for retirement accounts or primary residences ease the compliance load but create planning incentives to reshape holdings around the exempt categories.
Where This Goes Next
The pattern is consistent. A bill gets introduced, generates coverage, sits in committee, and either dies or returns the following session with a new number. California’s AB 259 failed. Washington’s HB 1473 stalled. New York’s S1570 went nowhere and reappeared as A3632. Hawaii’s SB 313 has advanced further than most, but its effective date was pushed to 2030. California proponents shifted to the ballot after the legislature closed the door.
Five years ago, state wealth taxes were fringe. Today at least seven states have active bills, one state has a ballot initiative gathering signatures, and a multistate coalition is openly coordinating strategy. Whether any of them reaches enactment depends largely on the courts, and specifically on whether a state proposal ever advances far enough to produce a definitive constitutional ruling.