Puget Sounds Patriots Monthly Meeting - Topics: Anti-Sheriff Bill (SB5974) & the Income Tax Bill (SB6346)

The Puget Sound Patriots invite the public to attend their monthly meeting on May 18, 2026 at 7 pm . Joel Ard Attorney will be discussing the issues.

Meeting Location: VFW Post 239 at 190 Dora Ave Bremerton off National Ave, by the US Post office.

Meeting Time: 7 pm

About:

The Anti-Sheriff Bill (SB5974) and the illegal Income tax Bill (SB6346), will be discussed at our PSP meeting. Come to this exciting meeting and hear Joel Ard, Bainbridge Island Attorney who is the attorney for Rick Kuss who is running for Sheriff of Kitsap County, discussing the issues surrounding Anti-Sheriff Bill (SB5974).   I will leave it up to Mr Ard to present the details of why this bad bill, can authorize removal from office, a duly elected Constitutional Sheriff over the vote of the people. That is atrocious and is being fought in court.

  Mr Ard will also be presenting the details of the unconstitutional State Income Tax Bill (SB6346), that your Legislators and your Governor just passed. You have been royally screwed and do not even know it yet.  You must now all file a State Income Tax (not just Millionaires) to try and get the family exemption, as the target keeps moving.  In 2024, lawmakers adopted Initiative 2111 by overwhelming margins of 76-21 in the House and 38-11 in the Senate. That initiative banned Washington from taxing “any individual person on any form of personal income.” Less than two years later, the same Legislature made an exception to that ban, in the same bill that needs the exception to be legal. Also, there is no “emergency” as stated in the Bill about a tax that won’t be collected for two years.

The constitutional problem is straightforward. Since 1933, Washington’s Supreme Court has held that income is property under our Constitution, and property taxes must be uniform. The court reaffirmed this in 2023 when it upheld the capital gains tax, but only because that tax targeted a specific voluntary transaction: selling investments. The “millionaires’ tax” has no such limiting principle. It taxes “the receipt of income,” which is just another way of saying it taxes income. In 1936, the court rejected this exact formulation in Jensen v. Henneford.  This Tax bill is the first step to taxing normal Washington citizens 9.9% in the very near future.

If the State Supreme Court overrules Culliton v. Chase, the 1933 precedent, as the Washington State Attorney General is requesting, there is no longer any constitutional barrier to a graduated income tax on all Washingtonians and you will be taxed to death.

Major Company billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz are leaving Washington, as companies quietly evaluate whether Washington State is still the right place to grow. When big companies leave Washington, the taxes they paid in the past will now be paid or collected from us regular citizens to support the Budget.  But the deeper issue is simpler: The Legislature made a promise to voters (no income tax), as stated above, in 2024 and broke it in 2026. Then they blocked the public from having a say by not allowing a referendum by the people to vote down this illegal Income tax by wording in the bill.  Now, with the governor’s signature approving the tax bill, lawmakers are asking the State Supreme court to rewrite 93 years of settled law to validate a bill they know is Unconstitutional.

Summarized comments of Viet Nguyen.