Washington Sales Tax by City

2026 rates for Washington's major cities

Rates as of August 2026, per the Washington DOR rate files¹. Washington's 2026 is unusually volatile — see "the 2026 rate wave" below — so re-check before large invoices.

The line that splits the state: the Sound Transit district

The single biggest factor in a Washington rate is whether the address sits inside the Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) district — the urbanized parts of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. Inside, a 1.4% district tax (raised from 0.9% by the ST3 ballot measure in 2017) funds Link light rail and Sounder trains³. That one layer explains the table above: every 10%+ city is inside the district, every sub-9.5% city is outside. The mechanics of district taxes generally are covered in special taxing districts.

Destination sourcing: the rule that picks the rate

Washington has been fully destination-sourced since 2008: the rate is determined by where the buyer receives the goods. Practical readings:

• Ship Spokane → Seattle: charge Seattle's 10.55%, not Spokane's 9.1%. The warehouse's rate is irrelevant.
• Over the counter: the store's own rate applies — that's where delivery happens.
• Contractor delivering to a job site: the job site's rate, which is why builders quote per-site tax in Washington.

The general origin-vs-destination framework — and which states work the other way — is in origin vs destination sales tax.

The 2026 rate wave: 0.1% at a time

A 2025 state law allowed cities and counties to adopt 0.1% public-safety sales taxes by council vote — no ballot needed — and adoption has rolled through 2026 in quarter-day steps: Seattle and King County each added 0.1% on 1 January (Seattle: 10.35% → 10.55%), Tacoma stepped to 10.4% on 1 April and 10.5% on 1 July, Olympia reached 10.0% on 1 July. Washington also has the country's strictest change calendar: local rates may only change on 1 January, 1 April or 1 July — never October — after 75 days' notice. If you sell into Washington, put those three dates in your calendar; the general rules are in rate changes and effective dates.

Since October 2025, Washington taxes these services

The other 2025 shock was ESSB 5814, which pulled a long list of previously untaxed services into retail sales tax from 1 October 2025²:

• Information-technology services — training, support, technical services
• Custom software, customization of prewritten software, and custom website development
• Digital automated services (the old "human effort" exclusion is repealed)
• Advertising services
• Investigation, security and armored-car services
• Temporary staffing and live presentations

If you sell any of these into Washington, you're now charging the buyer's local rate on them — at Seattle's 10.55%, a $10,000 consulting-adjacent invoice carries $1,055 of tax that didn't exist in September 2025. The DOR is running a penalty-relief program (applications through September 2027) for businesses that misapplied the transition.

Why Washington rates change four times a year

Washington local rates change on a quarterly cycle, which is faster than most states and the main reason a Washington rate cached last year is likely wrong now. Cities, counties, transportation benefit districts, and regional transit authorities can each start or end a levy at a quarter boundary.

For a seller shipping across Washington that makes rate maintenance an operational task rather than an annual one. Because Washington uses destination sourcing, the rate follows the delivery address — so a change in one transit district changes the correct rate for part of your customer base without changing anything at your own location.

What Washington taxes that its neighbours do not

Two features separate Washington from Oregon and Idaho on either side:

• SaaS and digital products are taxable as digital automated services — a notably broad position compared with states that exempt hosted software entirely.
• The B&O tax sits alongside sales tax. Washington's business and occupation tax is levied on gross receipts, is not a sales tax, is not recoverable, and does not appear on a customer receipt. A business planning around Washington's lack of income tax needs to count it.

Groceries remain exempt, which meaningfully lowers the effective burden for households relative to the headline combined rate — one reason a rate ranking overstates what Washington residents actually pay compared with a state that taxes food.

Working with Washington rates

Because rates move quarterly and the RTA border doesn't follow ZIP codes, resolve Washington rates from the full delivery address — the state's own lookup works that way, and ZIP-level shortcuts miss worst exactly here. Our lookup resolves any Washington address, and each city page — Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver — calculates with its current rate.