Measures 66 67
In the article of Warnke (2009), he stressed that Measures 66 67 are extremely poor legislation for they only increase the disparity between the income taxes of individual and corporate entities and creates significant raise in the corporate income tax at the expense of small and locally owned businesses.
Measure 66 primarily increases the individual income tax being collected by the government. What makes this legislation harmful on the part of every individual tax payers would be the fact that tax brackets are not adjusted to inflation, hence overtime, if the number of tax payers increased, they will be pushed to a higher tax bracket even if their real income does not increase.
On the other hand, even though Measure 67 aims to increase the tax being collected on corporations, it will primarily hit the small and locally owned businesses while letting the big and non-locally owned businesses to shoulder less tax burden. There is a quotation in the said legislation that it will target businesses with losses or no net income. In other words, those small and locally owned businesses, which are already in disadvantage in terms of market competition against big and non-locally owned companies, will be the one directly hit by this legislation.
If the government will continue to pass Measures 66 67, there is a great possibility that tax evasion cases will become more prevalent among individuals as they are unable to pay higher taxes. In addition to this, small and locally owned companies may start shutting down their operations or transfer their operations to other place with relatively low tax rate. In effect, unemployment will start to increase, hence causing much trouble to already in disadvantaged citizens of Oregon. The income gap between individuals and corporations will continue to grow, leading to unfair distribution of wealth in the economy.
As a solution, this paper suggest the federal government of Oregon to include inflation in determining the income brackets of individual tax payers as part of its mechanism in collecting a justreasonable tax on every citizen of Oregon. Also, government officials must ratify the provision in HB 3405, the legislative counterpart of Measure 67, the collection of higher tax among businesses with losses or no net income to prevent further burden among small and locally owned business. At this point where market competition is on the side of big and foreign owned businesses, it would be better for the government officials of Oregon to give a little more concern on the welfare of small and locally owned business to protect the welfare of their locals and consumers.
In contrast, Sales Tax would be a better tax scheme as compared to Measures 66 67 since it includes inflation, which is already part of the price of the commodity, in determining how much tax is to collect on a particular individual, hence reflecting the real income of the individual tax payer. Furthermore, it also provides a breathing space for companies in tax collection since they will not shoulder the full cost of the said tax by passing a percentage of it to their consumers.
After all the discussions and arguments presented above, it is therefore clear that one should not vote for the passing of Measures 66 67 since these legislation has far-reaching adverse economic consequences, primarily increasing the income gap between individuals and corporations and providing more tax pressure among small and locally owned businesses.