Portland to successful people: Get out


Here's a depressing roundup of all the new taxes that Portland residents will be paying starting in a couple of months. Between this and the obsessive hatred of automobiles, it's never been clearer that if you have a life, and you're good at something, Portland doesn't want you.

With the passing of the preschool tax in addition to the recently passed measures, the combined top state and local income tax rate for Multnomah County residents who earn over $250,000 will be at or near the highest in the Unites States. In addition, it is estimated that businesses in Multnomah County will be subject to a more than 20% increase in overall taxes due to the recent tax changes.

And for this, you get a boarded-up downtown and homeless camps everywhere. Go by streetcar!

Comments

  1. We used to take the Max or the bus downtown pretty often. For a time we commuted by bus to downtown. I won't get on either these days. Who wants to get stabbed waiting for the bus/Max?

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    1. Right now, Covid makes mass transit a nonstarter for me.

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    2. I was going to stand down this morning but you would have to bring up Tri-Met. I had a business (joke writing) where my entire product left the state. I would then receive payment from out of state so there were no roads or buses or trains involved. And yet they made me pay a Tri-Met tax because somewhere several blocks away a bus would go by while I was doing this. I felt it was a ripoff then and I still do.

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    3. Be grateful the city didn't also come after you for the business tax.

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  2. Refreshing to read a brief, sane review of the taxing philosophy in Portland. Universal pre-school is a laudable concept, but to your point it so easy in Portland 2020 to just say "Let that couple/family pay for it, you know, because they are 'wealthy' (hissss)." 200k isn't chicken feed, but I wouldn't call a working couple in 2020 who make 200k in 2020 "wealthy," which is what the measure's proponents say over and over? This is significant cash people will have to pay out. When it goes operational, it is limited to a little over 7k kids, so during the initial phase it will be a little bit north of 27k per kid. For pre-school. When they expand the number of kids eligible, how can this ever be a sustainable tax structure?

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    Replies
    1. Okay I just saw some lame syntax errors in my post, which makes me extra insecure since you are a law professor...

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