Taxes and Fees

My wife asked me to check out two bills, HB 2436 and HB 2461.

HB 2436 is an Oregon bill designed to provide housing needs for the poor by increasing the fees collected by county and state clerk offices by $15.00. They expect to raise 19.6 million dollars over the next two years. According to the Marion County Clerk, Bill Burgess, in all 36 counties during FY 07-08, there were only 972,723 taxable transactions. Lets do simple math 15 x 972,723 - 19,600,000 = -5,009,155, where are they going to get the rest? Mr. Burgess also says there has been a 20% decline in Oregonians using this service. Lets do more math. 15 x (972,723 x .80) - 19,600,000 = -7,927,324. I wish a legislator could do simple math. The other question is who will be responsible for the low income rentals. Are we now going to let the government operate rental units or are they going to set prices at privately owned apartments? Either is unacceptable in a free society.


HB 2461 Beer tax. The premise is to use the tax money to pay for prevention and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. What about the wine and spirits producers, don't they need a tax increase too? What about the drug makers and dealers? Should they not also contribute? The funniest thing to me is that we are taxing some of the people that need the help. Hey I forgot a group, the home brewers, we need to tax them also. How you ask? Impose taxes on hops, yeast and other products needed to make beer. In a time of economic downturn this is not what we need. Drug and alcohol problems are not are biggest concern at the moment. While we debate the need to raise taxes, more and more Oregonians are losing their jobs only to feel the government taking more money away from them.

These two bills will just grow government, tax the middle and lower class, and reduce liberties for Oregonians. Some legislators think this is good for Oregon. Let's examine some other revenue streams that harm all Oregonians. Tobacco tax, who smokes more the rich, the middle class, or the poor? Poor. And the lottery, who purchases most of the lottery tickets? Again, the poor. Gas tax, who drives the most? You get the picture. The very people that need most or all of the help that these tax streams provide are paid for by the people who have the least amount of income to spend.

Harry