Sunday’s Oregonian published….

December, 2025

Sunday’s Oregonian published an OpEd co-authored by Jody Wiser

We wanted to share an important op-ed published Sunday that makes a compelling case for why Oregon legislators must reject Trump’s tax giveaways and protect nearly $900 million in state revenue that serves working families across our state.

Read the op-ed here: https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2025/12/opinion-oregon-legislators-must-reject-trump-tax-giveaways.html

This piece reinforces what we know: 80% of the benefits from these federal tax cuts flow to the wealthiest 10% of Oregonians, while the rest of us would see critical services—schools, health care, child care, food assistance, housing assistance—slashed to pay for it.

Immediate Ask: Share on Social Media and with your Legislators

Please share this op-ed across your social media networks today and send to Legislators with a call to action to reject the Trump tax giveaways. Every voice matters, and we need to build momentum going into Legislative Days and short session.

Please take a few minutes to read the op-ed and start thinking about how you and your friends and any organizations you are involved with might engage. We need to work together to protect the services that working families rely on.

Our View on Oregon’s Business Climate

November, 2025

Our View on Oregon’s Business Climate

Legislators and the public will often hear from anti-tax business lobbyists and others that wealthy businesses should get to keep all the tax breaks in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill (H.R.1), both on their federal returns and on their Oregon returns. They get angry when it is pointed out that these federal tax cuts come from a law passed by a Republican Congress. They are paid for by cutting food and health insurance for Oregonians. These are tax changes our legislature did not vote for. Now Oregon has to deal with the hunger and health care issues pushed on us by Congress with less revenue.

In fact, the business lobby says there should be no new taxes in Oregon and we should eliminate some of the ones in the Portland Metro area. Their argument is “Businesses hire the people who pay taxes, and since Oregon is so dependent upon income taxes, business subsidies should be left alone or expanded.” Some of those business arguments against Oregon’s taxes and regulation were recently made by Karla S. Chambers in the Oregonian.

In rebuttal is Chuck Sheketoff’s recent opinion piece in the Oregon Capital Chronicle, providing

an historical perspective on Oregon’s business climate. (Be sure and click on the links in Chuck’s piece!)

Since the late 1990s, the states’ income tax revenue has shifted from business to personal income taxpayers. As the Oregon Center for Public Policy recently reported “In Oregon, corporations used to contribute 18% of income taxes. Due to loopholes, tax avoidance, and changing to a single sales factor, the corporate share of our income taxes has declined by more than 40% since the mid-1970s.”

In addition, many of the largest corporations pay wages that do not support their employees’ basic needs. Those needs have increasingly been subsidized by federal programs like SNAP Medicaid and health care tax credits. And by federal and state EITC and Kids Credits.

Now, with the “Big Beautiful (or Ugly) Bill,” poorly paid employees will be losing federal subsidies for food, housing and health care. This means the state will need to pick up the slack or see many more Oregonians falling into poverty.

How can Oregon deal with the $880 million in tax losses caused by the bill? One way is to disconnect from some of the tax breaks in the Big Ugly Bill, writing our own tax law. But Oregon will also need to find new revenue to both cover the bill’s new administrative costs and to backfill some of those benefits people rely on.

For a deep dive into little known US tax history, listen to this entertaining and eye-opening interview on tax history with author and Brookings Senior Fellow Vanessa S. Williamson and Danny Werfel, former IRS Commissioner. You will learn that the early Tea Party activists were angry about a new tax break for the monopolistic British Tea Company, not about having to pay taxes.

For a general overview of the US Tax system and how it benefits the wealthy over others and what needs to be done to change it, see this excellent video by Boston College Law School Professor, Ray Madoff.

As you know, Tax Fairness Oregon is on the side of the state taking care of her citizens rather than giving more tax breaks to already wealthy corporations and individuals. At this link and below is the list of revenue raising ideas we shared with legislators in recent weeks. We fully support the ideas in black, being pushed by the broad-based coalition, Protect Oregon Now. But we also support the additional revenue raising ideas you’ll see in blue.

If you want to learn more about each of those blue ideas, check the “Resources” tab at our website.

And if you want to get more engaged with the work of Tax Fairness Oregon, let us know. We can always use more help!


Disabled And Senior Homeowners Property Tax Deferral Program

October 26th, 2025

Here in Washington County our property tax bills have arrived. Yours may have too. Disabled and senior homeowners can borrow from the State of Oregon to pay their property taxes to the county.

Today I helped a friend apply for the senior property tax deferral program. Because she is filing late, she’ll pay a fee of $70 (2% of taxes due but no more than $180). But she’ll not need to pay her property tax bill of $3500.

This means she’ll have an extra $$292 per month to spend! Woo hoo!

She’s eligible because she 62 or older or disabled receiving SSDI and meets the criteria of the program which are spelled out on this flyer. The filing deadline for this year’s taxes is December 1st. One files with their county assessors’ office after filling out this application form found online. Take it with you.

Next year the program will be available to a broader range of applicants, those with income of up to $70,000 rather than $60,000 and with homes up to 50% more valuable than the current table. Applications for next year’s taxes are due January 1 – April 15 (without the fee my friend paid for filing late).

The new flyer will look like this:

Even if you aren’t needing this program, you may know someone who likely does. Please share this information.

Oregon is in trouble

October 10th, 2025

Heading into the 2025 Session we were told to expect no serious revenue raising discussions other than for transportation. This was in fact what happened although as you all know, the ODOT bill to accomplish this failed in the regular session and a reduced version finally passed last week in a special session.

The result was that the revenue committees spent most of their time looking at bills to give tax breaks to narrow interest groups. We dutifully testified against these bills and fortunately they almost all failed. Our task was aided by Ways and Means that put out the word early in the session that the budget was tight and they wanted to increase our reserves, not reduce them. Therefore, they would not tolerate anything more than nominal tax expenditures.

The one benefit of the revenue committees lack of major bills to consume their time is that we were able to work on issues below the radar. We got an agreement to make reporting on our 15-year rural property tax exemption programs more comprehensive. We also got $150,000 to promote our existing senior and disabled property tax deferral program. Few of the legislators clamoring for exemptions to property taxes for seniors were even aware of this existing program that postpones their taxes while they live in their home but doesn’t result in reduced county revenues.

As soon as our Oregon legislative session was over, the Republicans in Congress finalized Trump’s tax and spending cuts legislation: HR 1, which put our state finances in a tailspin. The most recent forecast says that we will lose $888 million of state tax revenue in the current biennium due to our connection to the federal changes in calculating taxable income. We also expect to lose about $1 billion in our all-funds budget, primarily SNAP food benefits and Medicaid support. To add to our woes, HR 1 also requires the state to pick up a bigger share of SNAP costs and spend substantially more on administration for both SNAP and Medicaid benefits. This will likely add hundreds of millions in additional costs to these programs. This biennium’s $2 billion in cuts is a slow start on our terrible longer-term prospects. In the 2029-2031 biennium we expect the state and her citizens will see cuts of over $9 billion.

As a result, we have worked this summer seeking action from the legislature and the Governor to disconnect from some parts of the new federal tax changes and explore ways to increase tax revenues to offset a portion of these federal cuts. We’ve found no elected taking a strong leadership role, so we revived the Revenue Coalition – a group of human services, public policy and union organizations – to bring others to the task. The coalition is meeting weekly on Wednesdays and our Tax Fairness Oregon team meets on Fridays.

Take action on baseball stadium funding

May 12, 2025

One Way to Cultivate Change

It’s essential to building a vibrant community

A lot of the talk in Salem these days focuses on Senate Bill 110-A. The bill increases – by one billion dollars – the amount of players’ taxes that can be diverted from the General Fund to pay for a Portland MLB baseball stadium.

$200-$300 million is already approved via a bill passed in 2003. SB110-A adds about a billion in cost, by changing the base loan from $150 million to $800 million plus “reasonable interest.”

Despite our recent testimony and meetings with numerous legislators in opposition to SB110-A, the Senate approved the bill with only five “no” votes.

The bill has now moved onto the House Revenue Committee for a public hearing this Thursday. If it leaves the committee, it will go to the House floor for final vote. Our best bet is to kill it in this committee.

Submitting testimony and/or registering to testify this Thursday, May 15 for the House Revenue Committee can make a difference and generate change.

A vibrant community needs taxes to be fair for all. We can’t afford to support 482 households (that’s the team’s estimate of the number of employees they will have) with no tax revenue. Yet under SB110-A, all the player and staff taxes for 30 years will go to the owners of the team to pay for the stadium for their team. $200 to $300 million is more support than we’ve given any other team. That’s enough.

“Register to testify” and/or “Submit Testimony” (both quoted links are located on Oregon State Legislature SB 110-A Website top ribbon) at Thursday’s, May 15, 3 PM House Revenue Committee hearing

A little history and talking points.

At first glance, the cornerstone of the Portland Diamond Project looks appealing. However, we are struck by how many of their talking points are misleading, ambiguous, and deceptive, such as these four.

  • Advocates say a baseball team is a catalyst for economic development. But 45 years of economic studies show that stadiums fail as an economic development catalyst. Most stadium-related spending reflects the reallocation/shift of spending from other local establishments, not creating new spending. We love the Trailblazers, but they are not an economic engine.
  • SB 110-A is the biggest single ask for state funds for any private business or cultural venue in Oregon history.
  • How do local community services get funded if the tax revenue from the team’s salaries pays for stadium construction, and the stadium’s property taxes pay for road improvements? Devoting this additional $1 billion to the stadiums will lead to fewer dollars available for police, fire, schools and other public services the team and stadium require.
  • The diversion of up to $1.4 billion in baseball players’ taxes establishes a troubling precedent. Once this mechanism is used for baseball, other sports teams like the Trailblazers’ – with their 30-year old MODA Center soon requiring major rehab or replacement – will expect similar treatment resulting in additional losses to state income.

“Register to testify” and/or “Submit Testimony” (both links are located on Oregon State Legislature SB 110-A Website top ribbon)

We need a ‘strikeout’ to defeat this bill and it’s extra $1 billion for the stadium. With your help in posting testimony or testifying we will kill SB110-A in the House Revenue Committee. Expect a two-minute time limit when speaking. Let’s keep that billion dollars to fund education, public health, safety and other necessary services for vibrant Oregon communities.

Thanks for your continued support.

Take action on baseball stadium funding

May 12, 2025

Do you know a senior or someone with disabilities or do you struggle to pay your property taxes?


Are property taxes difficult?








Oregon has a program to help seniors and disabled homeowners when their property taxes are too big a burden.

The Senior and Disabled Property Tax Deferral Program delays owners’ property taxes. It means $275 a month in the typical participant’s pocket now, when they need it.

The deferred property taxes and interest are repaid when the home is sold or otherwise transferred. Currently that money, when paid back, stays in the program.

Of course there are requirements:

  • Over age 62 or disabled under Social Security.
  • Have owned and lived in the home for five years.
  • Household income from all sources of less than $60,000 a year.
  • Assets other than the home and car valued at less than $500,000 – that’s IRAs, cash, savings, stocks, rentals, etc.
  • Current taxes are paid in full and the home is insured
  • Home value about average for the county of residence, with adjustments for the number of years of residence. In Multnomah County the values range from $499k to $1.2m. See the chart here. No appraisal is needed. The value used is the Real Market Value (RMV) of the home on the most recent tax bill.
  • Interest is 6% simple interest on the deferred property taxes.
  • Applications are open until April 15th.

This is a great program for some people. The local governments get their taxes, so services are not hurt. The taxes are paid by the state in time for homeowners to receive the 3% discount.


Explore the application here. You will soon learn if you are eligible.

If you like the idea, but do not qualify for some reason, or if you are eligible but reject the program for some reason — please, please, please tell us why.

We are exploring needed changes to the program. The $500,000 asset limit has been unchanged since 2011. Is this a problem? Is the five years of ownership too long? Please email your experience and thoughts to TaxFairnessOregon@gmail.com

Do you know a senior or a disabled homeowner who might find the Property Tax Deferral Program helpful? Please share this program with them.

Even if you don’t need it now, knowing this program exists is like having an insurance policy.

Want to help others know about this program? Print out the this flyer and post it at your local coffee shops and library or senior centers.

Help us, Please!

Feb 11, 2025

Written and verbal testimony is working!

The committees are hearing much more balanced testimony on the estate tax bills than is normally the case because of what you have been doing.

All but one of the 17 bills introduced so far would reduce revenue by awarding tax break reductions to families with more than $2,000,000 in estate assets. The other bill is to “study” the issue.

But – today a Senator agreed to ask that a bill be drafted that will raise the $1 million exemption somewhat and pay for the change by increasing the tax on larger estates. The goal is a bill that is revenue neutral!

I was wrong Sunday when I wrote.

The bills on Wednesday vary. SB 380 appears to be an attempt to be revenue neutral, receiving less tax revenue from smaller estates and more from larger ones.

But nope! We learned today we misread the bill. SB 380 adds an extra $1.5 million exemption to smaller estates while giving smaller addition tax breaks to all but the largest estates.

Every bill Wednesday in Senate Finance and Revenue would grab money out of the General Fund and hand it to the best-off Oregonians. And none of them is seeking only small fistfuls of the $700 million expected in the next biennium.

Chair Meek will open a hearing on all three bills at once (really four bills but SB 405 and SB 648 are duplicates). So verbal testimony will need to be general. Include concepts like:

“Don’t expect everyone else to pay for tax breaks for the rich. Any change must be revenue neutral.”

“I oppose any bill that would shift the costs of government off the shoulders of folks who won the birth lottery.”

You’ll have your own good words. Your testimony has been original and powerful.

I forgot to provide the following bits of essential information in Sunday’s email:

To submit testimony, testify or listen in, use this link. But sign up to testify only for the first bill, SB 380 as Senator Meek is “hearing all four bills at once.”

https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Committees/SFR/2025-02-12-08-30/Agenda

To submit testimony, use the same link and click on bill number SB 380 and follow the prompts.

If you want to submit testimony on each of the four bills, just click on each bill number.

An Oregonian story Monday covers the hearing last Thursday. With quotes from Steve Wright and me, and of course from the other side as well.

Why should 95% of Oregonians subsidize the very wealthy?

Feb 9, 2025

Unfortunately, last week’s estate tax hearing was not the end of estate tax legislation for the year.

This Monday and Wednesday, the other revenue committee, the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee, has hearings on five more estate tax bills. Some would reduce revenue by even more than the $600 million cost of House Bill 2301.

Monday’s bill leaves open how much the reduction would be. There are blank lines in the bill to later decide what the increased exemption would be. But the result of any change will be a decrease in the number of estates that pay the estate tax and a decrease in General Fund revenue.

The bills on Wednesday vary. SB 380 appears to be an attempt to be revenue neutral, receiving less tax revenue from smaller estates and more from larger ones. Both SB 405 and SB 648 would tax only those few estates valued at over $13,610,000. SB 764 wouldn’t tax family-owned businesses.

We oppose any bill that would shift the costs of government off the shoulders of folks who won the birth lottery.

As Marcia Kelley, who represents the Oregon Women’s Rights Coalition said on Thursday, “Why should normal Oregonians subsidize the very wealthy?”

Thanks to your response to our last email, written testimony for the House Revenue hearing on HB 2301 had 20 of us opposing reductions to the estate tax vs 85 supporting dropping the revenue from this tax. That’s way better than usual!

The hearing itself included several voices supporting a robust estate tax. If you’ve not watched a hearing in Salem, this would be an interesting place to start. Listen by tapping on the circle beside the date 2/6/2025. Near the very end of the hearing (at 1:35) you will hear the committee staff say that HB 2301 would likely reduce revenue by 86%, or $600 million a biennium! That’s way more than our back of the envelope guesses.

It is lovely when unfamiliar citizens speak before the committee. Please consider not only submitting testimony but also signing up to speak. Expect a 2-minute limit.

Estate Tax hearing this Thursday at 3:00

Feb 4, 2025

Thursday at 3:00 the House Revenue Committee is holding hearings on two estate tax bills. HB 2093 would study the estate tax and HB 2301 would nearly eliminate it.

Every time there is an estate tax hearing, a bunch of folks to submit testimony, usually from small farmers who will never pay the tax because the value of their farms is well below the special provisions we have for farm, fish and forest families which allow them to pass their natural resource assets on with no estate taxes. Despite that, their voices are heard.

It’s essential that alternate voices be heard.

Ones that say:

  • This is a tax on children who happened to win the birth lottery.
  • A tax paid by only 5.5% of all decedent’s estates each year, why reduce it to 0.3%?
  • A tax that helps address inequality.
  • The source of about $600 million each biennium in state revenue would be reduced to $100-$200 million.

At $1 million, Oregon does have the lowest estate tax threshold in the country, for all but farm, fish and forest families. Yes, that’s true. It’s part of why we have smaller differences between the rich and the poor in Oregon than in most states. It’s one of the good things about Oregon.

We need voices to wonder why, with 22,000 homeless in Oregon, the Revenue Committee, is looking at bills that might benefit a tiny slice of the very best-off Oregonians. Only 2300 of 40,000 decedents pay any estate tax in a typical year, that’s 5.5% of all estates.

Few businesses in Oregon are seriously impacted by Oregon’s estate tax since $2 million (one million from each parent) passes tax free, and the tax rate on amounts over that begins at 10% and rises to only 16%.

Imagine a family whose homes and businesses are worth $5 million. Once both parents have passed, the estate tax will be on $3 million of those assets and will be just over $300,000. For the heirs to receive $4.7 million in assets rather than $5 million – is that a big problem that must be fixed by the legislature? The estate tax is clearly a rich kids’ tax. Yet the committee will be discussing HB 2301, a bill that raises the threshold from $1 million to $7 million and lowers the tax rate to 7%.

The over $600 million a biennium in estate taxes that Oregon receives is essential to providing services to all Oregonians. HB 2301 would mean only about 110 estates would pay estate taxes each year, and that they would pay less. It would mean cutting over $400 million a biennium in services to foster kids, third graders, seniors, the homeless or the business community.

Please submit written testimony by Thursday noon, using your own words. You can also sign up to testify, which can be done in person or virtually. Testimony time will be limited, usually to under two minutes. Present your written testimony here. Register up to testify here.

Currently there are 11 letters supporting HB 2301 and 2 opposing listed under testimony under HB 2301. Let’s change those numbers to many more oppoding letters.

If you want some help in crafting your words, call 503 810-6654 or send an email to taxfairnessoregon@gmail.com

Doing business with tax cheats?

Feb 3, 2025

Tax Fairness Oregon’s first bill of the session is HB 2084. The bill is seeking a way to make sure Oregon isn’t doing business with folks who don’t bother to pay their taxes.

As it happens, this bill exists because of an investigative news story. Hillary Borrud of the Oregonian wrote an extensive piece about an Sean Keys, an Oregonian with $70 million in contracts with the state of Oregon, who was not paying Oregon taxes. His tax bills, until shortly before the story was published, were more than $1.6 million. He owed property taxes in several counties as well as state income, transit and withholding taxes.

It appears that he was using the state and counties as his bank. Borrud’s investigation came from her perusal of Oregon’s new tax delinquency website, where the taxpayer owned $925,000, a debt that mostly has been either cleared or put into a payment plan.

It is clear that the bill does not fully address the problem and that Keys isn’t the only person the state has stumbled into business with who doesn’t play by normal rules. Just yesterday

Willamette Week published a story about another business apparently playing loose with the law. This one is accused – among other things – of tax fraud, not just failure to pay.

If we read the news stories and the state’s rules and law correctly, and we’re not sure we do, currently anyone signing a contract with the state for more than $1000 must sign a statement that says they comply with all of the tax laws of the state.

We assume these businessmen signed those statements. The blank form we’ve seen gives no definition of tax compliance or what the consequences are for not telling the truth on the form. Is it “perjury” which is a felony, or “false swearing” or “unsworn falsification” which are misdemeanors? The jail terms and/or fines are significantly different, from five years to five months in jail or $125,000 to $2500 in fines. And those fines were set in 1971. If indexed, a $2500 fine would be $18,000 today. Of course, we wonder if the state ever imposes those fines or jail time. For some, compliance is dependent upon consequences.

The bill needs work. A session workgroup is in order. It might look deeper than taxes at the effectiveness of state’s approval of contract partners.

Two hundred tax bills

Jan 20, 2025

The legislative session opens Tuesday. If you go to the OLIS website and search for bills with the word “tax”, 200 bills show up. Of course, more will be added as the session progresses, and some will never get a hearing, but with 200 “tax” bills we have our work cut out for us.

Sixteen of those bills are on the estate tax. Of course, “$1 million isn’t what it used to be” and “Oregon does now have the lowest exemption level in the county.” Both words we often hear. But still, if kids can inherit two $1 million homes, one from each of their parents, or $2 million when the second parent dies, is that tax law what the legislature needs to attend to?

Fifty-eight bills have the words “tax credit” in them. There are some problems that are best solved with a tax credit. We’re in the midst of studying whether the proposals in these bills make sense.

Hopefully there is at least one partial solution to our insanely unfair and inadequate property tax law in the 32 “property tax” bills. Have you noticed in the news how many counties and cities are facing budget cuts?

Want to help?

Reach out to TaxFairnessOregon@gmail.com