Capital gains tax
Oregon has one of the highest capital gains taxes in the nation. There are a few bills in the 2011 Legislature that would reduce these taxes. The issue is cut capital gains taxes is shared by many sides in the State capitol. Governor Kitzhaber has proposed cutting $25 million from capital gains taxes. House Republican Leader Kevin Cameron, himself a small businessman, has proposed a 50% reduction. Read more…
100 Ways to Balance the State Budget without new taxes!
In light of Oregon facing a budget crisis, the Taxpayer Foundation has issued a master list of budget balancing ideas that do not require raising taxes. These ideas have been collected from Oregon lawmakers, think tank groups, taxpayer organizations, unions, policy analysts, Democrats, Republicans and even ideas utilized in states across the nation. To help lead the reader to more information, there are sources and representatives featured at the end of each idea. We hope this is a starting point to a discussion on solutions to Oregon’s budget problems. Read more…
Is tech a new bubble to burst? Should the Fed care?
By Oregon Tax News,
As technology expands, companies find themselves with increased market values. The emergence of social media (more than 500 million accounts on Facebook alone), combined with mobile phone use (4.5 billion), is dramatically changing technology. Currently, Facebook is valued at $75 billion, making the social-media giant more valuable than Disney. In addition, John Swartz and Matt Krantz reported in USA Today that Groupon, an online coupon site recently turned down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google, according to published reports.Americans’ fascination with technology is not a new fad. Although Tech and Internet stocks crashed in the dot-com bust of 2000, tech companies are reviving the get-rich-quick feelings toward tech stocks. The expansion of technology today is similar to the late 1990s in Silicon Valley. Netscape Communications’ stock prices rose to $75 a share in its first day of trading in August 1995. Unfortunately, tech and internet stocks crashed. Stockholders faced the fall of the Nasdaq index from more than 5000 in March 2000 to 1100 in late 2000 followed by a terrible recession. Read more…
States Consider Online Gambling to Raise Revenue
By Oregon Tax News
As states struggle to balance their budgets, they constantly search for new ways to increase revenue and decrease their deficits. Although there is a federal ban on Internet gambling, several states, led by New Jersey, battle to legalize online gambling by initiating state laws that could circumvent a federal ban on Internet gambling.
New Jersey is the first state to authorize online gambling. Although Republican Governor Chris Christie vetoed the bill, gambling experts believe states’ efforts to legalize online gambling for their own residents, known as intrastate gambling, are increasing. Iowa lawmakers followed New Jersey and introduced a bill to legalize online poker, and California and Florida are considering similar bills. Read more…
Oregonians flock to Washington to avoid tax bite
By Oregon Tax News,
Despite the decline in home sales, Clark County attracted 22 percent more out-of-town residents in 2010 than in 2009. Real estate experts believe the absence of income tax and low home prices contributed to the influx of new residents. Clark County boasts some of the lowest home prices in the Portland-Vancouver metro area. Read more…
Little People Stars Sue Washington County building inspectors
By Oregon Tax News
Little People, Big World stars Amy and Matt Roloff decided to sue Washington County for $200,000 and legal costs after John Wheeler, a Washington County building services inspector, allegedly trespassed on their Hillsboro farm on July 16, 2010. The complaint holds that Amy Roloff suffered severe distress after confronting Wheeler for trespassing. The plaintiffs named Wheeler’s supervisor, Jay Winchester, a co-defendant.
A crew filming the Roloffs’ reality television series caught the encounter and broadcasted it on network television.
Wheeler contends that he acted on his supervisor’s instructions, which permitted him to enter their property without seeking permission. KPTV reports that he allegedly passed numerous “No Trespassing” signs, passed a locked gate and ignored a call box he could have used to contact the family for permission to enter the property. Read more…
Texas Free Market Policies Beat California’s Economic Strategy
Texas managed to pull itself out of the recession with its free market policies during a time when California’s economy continues to decline. The Chief Executive magazine ranked California as the worst business climate in the nation, while Texas’ ranked the best. Experts attribute Texas’ vast natural and human resources combined with its low spending, low taxes, and low regulation to its economic growth. Read more…
Warning Signs for Renewable Energy
By Oregon Tax News
Signs of renewable energy storm clouds…
- 86% of new Congress Freshmen oppose climate change legislation
- 17 Senators signed a letter calling ethanol indefensible and unwise
- Both Al Gore and Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu blasted ethanol in the past few weeks
- The IEA is predicting the global gas glut to last a decade
With the 2010 elections behind us, environmental experts worry that the political shift in the U.S. House of Representatives may reduce federal spending on renewable energy projects. President Obama recently conceded that his push for comprehensive energy legislation was not likely to gain much traction until after the 2012 elections. Other issues of contention could lead to debate in Congress over the deepwater drilling moratorium and restrictions on protected western lands.
Change in Congress
The new Congress is expected to place a greater emphasis on balancing the budget and cutting taxes. This will threaten new policies supporting green innovation and efforts to cut back on carbon emissions. Think Progress, a website run by the Center for American Progress on the new Congress, reported that half of the freshmen Republicans are climate-change skeptics and 86% oppose any climate change legislation that would cost the government money. Green-tech entrepreneurs say that without a unified national policy, investors and businesses will increasingly leave the United States for Germany and Asia, where many governments have comprehensive energy legislation. Read more…
Money is not the teacher problem in Portland
By Richard Leonetti,
By Oregon Tax News,
A response to the Portland Public School’s call for a half-billion education bond and The Oregonian Editorial Board’s response.
Not so fast with a property tax increase of $2.00 per thousand for Portland Schools. Portland Schools already have borrowed $470 million and are already spending $50 million a year on capitol projects. The proposed new borrowing would make the total borrowing over $1 billion. Consider how well managed the Water Bureau and Portland’s recent computer upgrade turned out with multi-million dollar cost overruns on much smaller spending. Read more…
By Oregon Tax News,
- Did you know that of the 50 best-performing CEOs in the world only 14 had an MBA?
Josh Kaufman, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and former assistant brand manager for Procter & Gamble (P&G), thinks business school is a waste of time and money. Instead of paying $80,000 to $100,000 to attain an MBA, Kaufman suggests self-education. In an interview with Poets & Quants, Kaufman stated that MBA programs are so expensive that students “must effectively mortgage their lives” and take on “a crippling burden of debt” to get what is “mostly a worthless piece of paper.” Kaufman believes that MBA programs “teach many worthless, outdated, even outright damaging concepts and practices.” Read more…
