Seattle taxable retail sales, Q3 2025
Seattle businesses made $9.19 billion in taxable retail sales in Q3 2025, up 4.3% from the same quarter a year earlier, and up 1.5% after inflation. In July 2025 dollars the record quarter is $10.04 billion, in Q4 2019, and Q3 2025 is 8% below it.
Taxable retail sales are not all spending. They are what the sales tax applies to: most goods, restaurant meals, hotel rooms — and construction, which is why a building boom lifts the city’s total. Groceries and most services are exempt, so a household that spends more on rent and less on furniture shows up here as a fall. And when the state taxes something new, as it did from October 2025 with some services, the line rises with no change in what anyone bought.
Compare a quarter with the same quarter a year earlier, not the one before: the fourth quarter carries the holidays every year. The Department of Revenue publishes a quarter four to six months after it ends, from businesses’ own excise tax returns, so this post runs four times a year. The same report carries Washington’s restaurant and hotel sales, which have a post of their own.
Source: Washington State Department of Revenue, Quarterly Business Review, Table 3a/4a, taxable retail sales for the city of Seattle, all industries; deflated by the U.S. CPI-U. Auto-generated each build.