CPA services for the Tri-Cities, WA — Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, remote and licensed.

Here's the genuinely good news for a Tri-Cities business: none of Kennewick, Pasco, or Richland imposes a general city Business & Occupation tax on ordinary retail, service, or wholesale activity — unlike Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Vancouver, Olympia, Bellingham, Renton, or Kent. Each city's municipal code taxes only specific utility-type businesses (telephone, electric, gas, cable, water and sewer) at rates set for those narrow categories, plus standard business-license and admissions/gambling taxes where applicable. If you're comparing notes with a business owner in Seattle or Kent, this is the difference: they're very possibly filing a city B&O return; you're not.

That doesn't mean the Tri-Cities are tax-free — the state Business & Occupation tax still applies to every Washington business regardless of city: 0.471% for retailing, 0.484% for wholesaling and manufacturing, and the tiered Service & Other rate effective October 1, 2025 — 1.5% under $1 million in gross income, 1.75% up to $5 million, 2.1% above that. Washington's Small Business B&O Tax Credit can reduce or eliminate the state tax for the smallest filers, worth checking regardless of which of the three cities you're in.

For Hanford-area contractors specifically, correct B&O classification matters more than most — a subcontractor performing services for a prime contractor is generally taxed differently than a manufacturer or a retailer, and getting that classification wrong is one of the more common, and expensive, mistakes we see in government-contract-adjacent businesses. For agricultural businesses, Washington exempts a farmer's own wholesale sales of what they grew or raised from B&O tax entirely, and provides preferential manufacturing rates for specific agricultural processing activities — worth checking regardless of which of the three cities your operation sits in.