Washington state Senate bill would tax services that pay protesters

Leonard Christian, a Washington state senator, was sitting in his office with staff members “spitballing” when they “just started throwing out the craziest ideas we can think of,” he told JNS. “Then we started narrowing it down to reality.”

The Republican had been watching the news and seeing the same faces resurfacing in protests in Oregon and Washington. He wondered how they had time to keep showing up at such protests.

“That’s the same people,” he told JNS. “How in the world do they have time to be sitting there? I can’t do that. I’ve got to earn money.”

“Oh, they’re paid,” he realized.

Spitballing with his staff, he mentioned the idea of making such protest income taxable. “They were like, ‘Oh, that’s funny,’” he told JNS of the staffers. When he ran the idea by his wife, she asked him, “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Christian told JNS that the bill he introduced, Senate Bill 5819, or “ensuring paid protestor services are considered a temporary staffing service subject to state retail sales and use taxes,” is a “phenomenal tool” to use state resources to “dig into the web” of protest funders.

He hopes that the bill will help find “groups that are causing so much chaos and trouble with your community,” he told JNS, referring to Jews. “You never know what God wants you to do with this stuff.”

“I 100% stand with the Jewish folks,” he added. “I’m a Christian gentleman, and clearly the Bible says, ‘I bless those who stand with the Jewish people.’” (The Bible says something similar in Genesis 12.)

Christian’s bill would revise the state’s sales-tax framework, which defines “temporary staffing services” as “providing workers to other businesses, except for hospitals licensed under chapter 70.41 or 71.12 RCW, for limited periods of time to supplement their workforce and fill employment vacancies on a contract or for fee basis.”

The new bill would have “temporary staffing services” also mean “providing workers as paid protesters 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.”

“This isn’t technically a policy bill. It’s a tax bill,” he told JNS. “Republicans never support new tax bills, but I think this would be unanimous.”

“I’ve had more phone calls on this bill than I’ve had on anything else I’ve ever done in three years here,” he added.

The bill is expected to receive a hearing, and Christian told JNS that he plans to “spin up some folks” to get it voted out of committee. It will also need a fiscal note assigned to it to calculate how much it could generate for the state.

“It takes a long path,” he said.

©️JNS