Oregon

This week we released a handy guide of policy options for Moving Toward More Equitable State Tax Systems, and are pleased to report that many state lawmakers are promoting policies that are in line with our recommendations. For example, Puerto Rico lawmakers recently enacted a targeted EITC-like credit for working families, and leaders in Virginia and elsewhere are working toward similar improvements. Arkansas residents also saw their tax code improve as laws reducing regressive consumption taxes and enhancing income tax progressivity just went into effect. And there is still time for governors and legislators pushing for regressive income tax cuts…

With many people enjoying time off over the next couple weeks, and the longest nights of the year coming over the weekend, now is a good time to get plenty of rest and relaxation in advance of what is likely to be a very busy 2019 for state fiscal policy and other debates. Among those debates, Kentucky lawmakers will be returning to topics they could not resolve in a brief special session held this week, New Jersey and New York will both be deciding how to legalize and tax cannabis, and gas tax updates will be on the agenda in…

State lawmakers are preparing their agendas for 2019 and looking at all sorts of tax and budget policies in the process, raising many familiar questions. Oregon legislators, for example, will try to fill in the blanks in a proposal to boost investments in education that left out detail on how to fund them, while their counterparts in Texas face the inverse problem of a proposed property tax cut that fails to clarify how schools could be protected from cuts. Similar school finance debates will play out in many other states. Alabama, Kansas, and Louisiana will look at gas tax updates,…

State policymakers, voters, and observers have been reflecting on this year’s campaigns and looking ahead to how the policy opportunities in their states have shifted as a result. For example, Arkansas’s governor sees a fresh chance to slash income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents, while the governor-elect of Illinois will be doing just the opposite, launching into a promised effort to shore up the state’s budget by asking the wealthy to pay more. New York and Virginia residents may end up with buyers’ remorse after Amazon accepted their combined $2 billion tax subsidy offers for its HQ2 project. And…

Tuesday’s elections shook up statehouses, governors’ offices, and tax laws in many states, and in this week’s Rundown we bring you the top 3 election state tax policy stories to emerge. First, voters in Kansas and other states sent a message that regressive tax cuts and supply-side economics have not succeeded and are not welcome among their state fiscal policies. Meanwhile, residents of many other states, including most notably Illinois, voted for representatives who reflect their preference for equitable, sustainable policies to improve their state economies through smart public investments and improve the lives of all residents through progressive tax structures. Lastly, while some states missed…

In this special edition of the Rundown we bring you a voters’ guide to help make sense of tax-related ballot questions that will go before voters in many states in November. Interests in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington state have placed process-related questions on those states’ ballots in attempts to make it even harder to raise revenue or improve progressivity of their state and/or local tax codes. In response to underfunded schools and teacher strikes around the nation, Colorado voters will have a chance to raise revenue for their schools and improve their upside-down tax system at the…

OREGON Read as PDF OREGON STATE AND LOCAL TAXES Taxes as Share of Family Income Top 20% Income Group Lowest 20% Second 20% Middle 20% Fourth 20% Next 15% Next 4% Top 1% Income Range Less than $21,600 $21,600 to $37,200 $37,200 to $63,300 $63,300 to $103,800 $103,800 to $222,400 $222,400 to $483,400 over $483,400 […]

South Carolina lawmakers have finally passed a federal conformity bill in response to last year’s federal tax-cut legislation. Voters in many states are hearing a lot about tax-related questions they’ll see on the ballot in November, particularly residents of Florida, Montana, and Oregon, where corporate donors and other anti-tax interests are spending major sums to alter policy in their states. And states continue to work on ensuring they can collect online sales taxes and, in some states, online sports betting taxes.

The $2 trillion 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions set to expire at the end of 2025. Now, GOP leaders have introduced a bill informally called “Tax Cuts 2.0” or “Tax Reform 2.0,” which would make the temporary provisions permanent. And they falsely claim that making these provisions permanent will benefit […]

This report presents a comprehensive overview of anti-poverty tax policies, surveys tax policy decisions made in the states in 2018, and offers recommendations that every state should consider to help families rise out of poverty. States can jumpstart their anti-poverty efforts by enacting one or more of four proven and effective tax strategies to reduce the share of taxes paid by low- and moderate-income families: state Earned Income Tax Credits, property tax circuit breakers, targeted low-income credits, and child-related tax credits.

Even as the haze from western wildfires reduced visibility across the nation this week, voters got more clarity on what to expect to see on their ballots this fall, particularly in California (commercial property taxes and corporate surcharges), Colorado (income taxes for education), Missouri (gas tax update), and North Dakota (recreational cannabis). Meanwhile, although Virginia lawmakers won’t return until 2019, they got a preview of a clear-headed federal conformity plan they should strongly consider. And look to our “What We’re Reading“ section for further enlightenment from researchers on the [in]effectiveness of charitable contribution credits, the [lack of] wage growth for…

August is often a season for states to define the parameters of tax debates to come, and that is true this week in several states: a tax task force in Arkansas is nearing its final recommendations; residents of Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina await results of court challenges that will decide whether tax measures will show up on their ballots this fall; and Michigan and South Dakota are taking different approaches to making sure they’re ready to collect online sales taxes next year.

Consumers’ growing interest in online shopping and “gig economy” services like Uber and Airbnb has forced states and localities to revisit their sales taxes, for instance. Meanwhile new evidence on the dangers and causes of obesity has led to rising interest in soda taxes, but the soda industry is fighting back. Carbon taxes are being discussed as a tool for combatting climate change. And changing attitudes toward cannabis use have spurred some states to move away from outright prohibition in favor of legalization, regulation and taxation.

New Jersey avoided a second consecutive shutdown and proved that even against staunch opposition, progressive solutions to states' fiscal issues are attainable, and Arizona voters will likely have a chance to solve their education funding crisis in a similar way. Budget and tax debates remain to be resolved, however, in Maine and Massachusetts. Meanwhile, voters are gaining a clearer picture of what questions they will be asked on ballots this fall as signature drives conclude in several states.

With many state fiscal years beginning July 1, most states that will make decisions this year about federal tax conformity have now done so, so it is now time for an update on how well state policymakers have kept to, or veered from, the path we charted out earlier this year. Most states that have enacted laws in response to the federal changes have adhered to some but not all of the principles we laid out, with a few responding rather prudently and a handful charting a much more treacherous course of unfair, unsustainable policy based on unfounded promises of…