The Most Highly Paid CEO in America Lives in Washington, a State with No Income Tax

Expedia headquarters will move from the Eastside to a new home on the Seattle waterfront in 2018. Yan Balczewski/Shutterstock

I’m late to this news from Equilar and the Associated Press, but it’s still news worth sharing: Last year, the highest paid CEO in America came from the state of Washington.

Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Expedia, made $94.6 million in 2015, nearly $40 million more than the person in second place on Equilar’s list of highest paid CEO by state. According to Equilar, second-place goes to CBS’ Leslie Moonves of New York, where people in his income bracket pay 8.82 percent of their earnings to the state. The third most highly paid CEOs by state are Oracle’s Mark Hurd and Safra Catz from California, a state that taxes top earners at 13.3 percent.

Washington, which is criminally underfunding its public education system, has no income tax at all. If the state adopted New York’s income tax rates, Washington would have made $8.34 million just from Khosrowshahi alone. Under California’s income tax rates, the state could have collected $12.58 million—enough to pay the salaries of 211 mid-career Seattle teachers.

Just saying.