Taxation with Representation

To keep you all up-to-date on the latest Lane County news, and as a follow up to my now disappeared blog entry about the Rural Schools and the Saving the World Act, I will tell you about the new Lane County income tax.

It all started some two years ago when the Lane County Board of Commissioners decided that the county could use a new jail, increased law enforcement equipment/personnel, and some other things that the county "needed." They decided to do this by putting before the voters a county income tax. For those who don't know, Oregon does not have a sales tax and we have capped property taxes, meaning that to raise new funds it has to be an income tax. For a variety of reasons, the tax was defeated. Badly.

Last November, the Commissioners were at it again. This time they called the new tax a "income tax limit." Orwellian. Transparent. Unsuccessful. The divisions over whether to support or oppose this tax were interesting because the "law and order" types tend to be your anti-tax types. And your pro-tax types generally oppose a 1.1% flat tax, which was opposed. But the anti-tax types were thrown the bone of lower property taxes. While your hippies are against more jail space and law enforcement. And PERS income is exempted from the tax, which was the biggest topic of discussion.

Not willing to let "the will of the voters" stop them, the Board of Commissions voted to institute the tax anyway. As you can imagine, this has caused some consternation amongst the folk here in the 541. The Commissioners who voted for the tax claim that they had to because we were faced with the loss of all those federal dollars and they had to pass the tax just to maintain, not add services.

While I hate to find myself on the side of the "nutjobs" who oppose any and all everything the government does, I am not exactly stoked by the new tax. I'm mostly against it because I oppose flat taxes. I would also rather see property taxed, rather than income, so that corporations who own lots of land in the is heavily timbered region have to pay some of this tax. The "income below $20K " exemption doesn't really mollify me, as I don't necessarily think that someone earning $21K is not poor. But it is embarrassing to find yourself metaphorically standing next to someone holding a "No Taxation Without Representation" sign.