Tax Referral

A friend wrote to ask me:

Tom I spent 6 hours last Saturday in front of Aloha Post Office helping get signatures on two petitions which constituted the recently passed tax increase for Oregonians. One of our patrons use to work in accounting for Nike Inc. She was very convincing in accusing Nike of not paying any taxes at all some years, and many years paying less than the average family of 4. She said it is shameless and unethical the games many corporations play to keep from having to pay taxes. If this is so, perhaps the bill concerning changes to corporations taxes is a much needed overhaul. I don't know what to think. Are we the small people being manipulated by invisible connections with corporations to fight their battle to protect their unethical tax avoidance games????

What hard core information does Tea Party have? Do we have any tax attorneys or CPA's who can address what I've heard and speak to this problem?

Good for you for investing the time to roll back the tax increases.

It's typical of big-government types to criticize businesses for FOLLOWING the rules. When a Leftist creates a maze of incredibly complex rules, and then discovers that the result isn't what he expected, he accuses other people of being "unethical" or evil. In fact, Nike would be vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits if it failed to use every available lawful opportunity to lower its tax burden.

I have no doubt that Nike's tax liability was legitimately zero in Oregon in many years -- they do a lot of deductible R&D here, and don't have all that many sales here. Income tax is based on profit, not spending or activity, and state taxes are limited to your activities inside a given state.

The hard reality is that businesses never pay taxes, they only collect them. And yes there is a disparate impact when a bigger company can hire expensive talent to understand all the rules -- and lobby for loopholes -- when smaller firms cannot.

I know one small, family owned oil company that will make ZERO profit for 2008 and 2009 and will have to pay $30,000 under the new tax. How is that fair by any stretch of the imagination?

Finally, all of these tax increases were unneeded -- the state of Oregon is sitting on $4.9 billion in cash of which $3.5 billion is unrestricted. They had no legitimate need to raise taxes $2 billion.