Washington real estate excise tax (REET), explained for 2026

Real estate excise tax is the tax Washington charges when a property changes hands. It trips up new agents because it's graduated — the rate climbs in brackets — and because there are actually two taxes stacked together: a state portion and a local county portion. Get it wrong in front of a seller and you've mis-stated their net by thousands. Here's the whole thing in plain terms.

The state portion is graduated

For 2026, the state rate applies in bands, and each band of the sale price is taxed at its own rate:

• Up to $525,000 — 1.10%
• $525,000.01 to $1,525,000 — 1.28%
• $1,525,000.01 to $3,025,000 — 2.75%
• Above $3,025,000 — 3.00%

The key word is marginal: a $1.5M sale isn't taxed at 1.28% on the whole price — it's 1.10% on the first $525K and 1.28% on the rest.

Then add the local county portion

On top of the state tax, the county (and sometimes the city) adds a flat local rate — 0.50% in King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, Whatcom, Skagit, and Clark; 0.25% in Island, Mason, Lewis, and Cowlitz. Some cities add their own increment, so confirm the exact local rate with the county treasurer.

Worked examples

$500,000 in King County: state 1.10% × $500K = $5,500, plus local 0.50% × $500K = $2,500 → $8,000 (a 1.60% blended rate).

$1,500,000 in Snohomish County: state 1.10% × $525K ($5,775) + 1.28% × $975K ($12,480) = $18,255, plus local 0.50% × $1.5M = $7,500 → $25,755 (1.717% blended).

Who pays, and the exemptions

The seller customarily pays REET at closing unless the purchase and sale agreement negotiates otherwise; the county treasurer collects it when the deed records (RCW 82.45). Several transfers are exempt or get special treatment — gifts with no consideration, certain inheritance and divorce transfers, and a few others — but those are fact-specific. When an exemption might apply, that's a question for the closing agent or a CPA, not a rule of thumb.

Don't do this math by hand at a kitchen table. Our free WA REET calculator returns the exact figure for any price and county, and SENTINEL computes it deterministically inside full seller net sheets — never an LLM guess.