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March 08, 2009

Comments

Excellent analysis of Oregon's dumbest law. How about a reverse kicker? In years when the tax revenues fall more than 2% below projections, require the taxpayers to kick in a little extra.

Craig, excellent idea. You point toward the absurdity of basing Oregon tax policy on a projection rather than reality.

As I said in this post, this is wildly unbusiness-like. You don't see investors complaining when Amazon or General Electric generates revenues in excess of what was forecasted.

But Oregon "kicks back" lawfully collected taxes just because the state economist wasn't able to precisely predict the economic situation two years in advance. This is crazy, which is why no other state shares in Oregon's peculiar insanity.

What irks me the most is when ignorant people say, "The state doesn't have a right to keep excess taxes." No, these aren't "excess taxes." They are perfectly correct taxes. They're simply in excess of what was predicted because of better than expected economic conditions.

Like you said, it makes as much sense to demand more tax money from Oregonians when the revenue forecast was too high, as to refund tax money when the revenue forecast was too low.

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