The state portion of the sales tax is now 6.5%, but the legislature could cut it to 4.2% without bankrupting the state. All it takes is to get rid of all the exemptions — transactions that are exempt from the sales tax just because… they are.

The Washington State Budget and Policy Center provides this chart:

Option 3 shows what the state sales tax could be if services were taxed and subsidies removed. Not rocket science. But it would require some serious political magic.