You may not have heard much about it, but the state of Oregon recently decided to face some of its financial problems by proposing two tax increases — and to let the people decide.
Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
But there was just one catch, as there often is on tax issues. The majority of voters were asked to decide, in effect, whether they wanted to “tax somebody else.”
One proposal was to raise the personal state income tax rate from 9 percent to 10.8 percent, but only on households earning $250,000 or more ($125,000 for individuals). Households earning more than $500,000 or individuals earning more than $250,000 would see their income taxes increase to 11 percent.
The other proposal was to raise the corporate income tax.
Obviously, the tax increase proposals would not have directly affected most of the people voting.
So — surprise — most of the Oregon voters voted for both of the tax increases!
The “anti-tax-increase” voters on the first proposition numbered 579,538, while 688,049 were for the higher tax. On the second proposition, the anti-tax voters totaled 586,964, to 678,132 voters favoring the higher tax.
Perhaps the only real surprise was that the vote to “tax somebody else” was that “close.”