Meet Matt McIlwain and the Anti-Capital-Gains-Tax Dream Team Selflessly Fighting to Slash Matt McIlwain’s Taxes
Look who’s leading the campaign to give wealthy Washingtonians a giant tax cut: a fraudster, a Trumpster, and a Diet Koch.
When the Washington State Legislature finally passed a capital gains tax earlier this year, a campaign to repeal it was a foregone conclusion. There are simply too many greedy rich people eager to try, and too many greedy political opportunists who might profit from their trying. And so, it was no surprise when one of richest, greediest, most neoliberalliest men in the state took the lead to give wealthy Washingtonians a giant tax cut:
Meet Matt McIlwain. All $361 million of him.
A managing director at Madrona Venture Group, one of Seattle’s leading venture capital firms, McIlwain has quietly established himself as a rich man’s idea of a poor man’s Charles Koch. In fact, he has the stink of the Koch network all over him, sitting on the board of the Koch-affiliated Washington Policy Center and contributing to the Koch-funded super PAC Americans for Prosperity Action. And in the best Koch network tradition, McIlwain likes to create cynically named PACs too. For example, the “Opportunity for All Coalition,” whose self-proclaimed mission is to, you guessed it, strike down the new capital gains tax, apparently on behalf of “all” of the 0.1 percent of Washingtonians wealthy enough to ever pay it.
So invested is McIlwain in justifying his own outsized wealth that he recently tweeted the Washington Policy Center’s literally incredible “Free Markets Destroy Racism” video, unselfconsciously touting it as an “interesting perspective on the history of innovation in commerce that helped end racism.” Um… wow. In McIlwain’s rich white mind, I suppose, we should be paying him for amassing his fabulous wealth, rather than levying a teeny-tiny tax on it. And in a sense, we are paying McIlwain: during the pandemic, the various companies in which Madrona invests received nearly $24 million in PPP loans. Because nothing says “free market” like free government money.
Joining McIlwain in his self-righteous campaign to slash hundreds of millions of dollars a year from early childhood education is Washington’s most infamous ballot measure profiteer: billionaire bootlick Tim Eyman. Of course, that Eyman is involved in this effort goes without saying — an anti-tax initiative without Tim Eyman would be like a pumpkin spice latte without the pumpkin spice. Or the latte. Or the cup you put it in. It’s almost definitional.
This is, after all, what Eyman does for a living, and nothing is going to get in the way of Tim running the most lucrative initiative campaign of his career — not even the recent court order prohibiting him from doing exactly that. Finding him guilty of “numerous and blatant” campaign finance violations “which resulted from a knowing and intentional effort to conceal, deceive, mislead and engage in collusive behavior,” the court ordered Eyman to pay $5.5 million in penalties and legal fees, and banned him for life from directing campaign finances. But while the campaign’s bank account may be technically off limits, “legal defense funds” are not, and Eyman has transformed his into a bottomless well of unregulated political and personal cash.
Sharing the capital gains spotlight with Eyman has been state Rep. Jim Walsh, who, when he’s not busy pandering to millionaires, can be seen wearing a yellow Star of David at Trumpist rallies as a gesture that mask and vaccine mandates are as bad as the Holocaust (“In the current context, we’re all Jews,” an apparently unexterminated Walsh solemnly explained). Walsh vehemently opposed (and repeatedly misrepresented) the capital gains tax throughout the last session before making a big show of filing the initiative to repeal it. Together, Eyman, Walsh, and McIlwain have everything they need to get their cynical ballot measure in front of voters.
Yup, that’s the dream team fighting to make Washington’s tax code even more unfair and regressive: a fraudster, a Trumpster, and a Diet Koch.
To be clear, Washington currently has the most cruelly regressive tax system in the nation: If you earn under $24,000 a year you pay 17.8 percent of your income in taxes. If you earn $550,000 a year, you pay only 3 percent. If you’re Matt McIlwain, your state tax bill is little more than rounding error.
Once the capital gains tax is implemented on January 1, McIlwain and other 0.1 percenters would pay a 7 percent tax on profits over $250,000 from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets. That’s it. Just 7 percent of profits over $250,000 as opposed to 17.8 percent of every penny earned. Such a deal! And yet, with all our state’s pressing needs, what McIlwain, Walsh, and Eyman are collaborating on is a tax cut for the people who need it least: the superrich.
Eyman, Walsh, and McIlwain may come from very different backgrounds and have very different lifestyles. But one thing all three certainly have in common is that every bit of ridicule heaped upon them has been duly earned.
