WalletHub examines how people feel about local taxes and Oregon placed in the top two.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
WalletHub examined how people feel about local taxes and Oregon placed in the top two.
Only Montana — another state without a sales tax — finished higher in the rankings.
Oregon has long received praise from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-of-center group, for having a more progressive tax system because the state relies heavily on personal income taxes.
Of course, that doesn’t make Oregon’s tax system immune to criticism. Oregon’s governors and legislators have frequently sought systemic reforms to reduce the boom-and-bust nature of the state’s tax collections and provide more stable funding for schools. Some critics complain that businesses get too many tax breaks while others say the state’s relatively high personal income tax rates discourages business investment.
Voters themselves took the tax system into their own hands in the 1990s when they passed two measures placing new limits on property taxes — the latter of which had the effect of producing different burdens on homes of the same value.
(SOURCE: OregonLive.com)
Washington, which has a high sales tax and no income tax, finished dead-last.
The survey asked respondents at various income levels what percent of their pay should be collected as tax. Responses, grouped in income levels between $5,000 and $2.5 million per year, ranged from 2.5 to 16.4 percent and were shockingly linear. The more money people made, the more they felt they should be taxed.
(SOURCE: Portland Business Journal)
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