Oregon tech companies accounted for a record year in deals in 2014, but state coffers will not be significantly bolstered by that growth.
Oregon tech companies accounted for a record year in deals in 2014, but state coffers will not be significantly bolstered by that growth.
OregonLive.com’s Mike Rogoway explained why on Tuesday:
The biggest of last year’s deals – and the biggest deal for an Oregon tech company ever – was the $5 billion, all-stock merger of Hillsboro-based TriQuint Semiconductor with RF Micro Devices, a rival in North Carolina. The all-stock deal was structured to have no tax implications for investors – so there’s no tax windfall for Oregon.
(TriQuint’s share price more than tripled in the months between the deal’s announcement and its close; some investors may have taken the opportunity to lock in some profits – thereby triggering taxes on their capital gains. But TriQuint was a publicly traded company and the vast majority of the investors were surely outside the state.)
Other deals, such as Tripwire’s $710 million sale and the $524 million deal for NAVEX Global, probably were taxable to some degree. But both companies had sold recently and any capital gains generated by the deals would have been based on their prior valuations.
