Tax Alert! Kicker sneak attack and new home taxes.

The Legislature has been considering many bills to change the peoples’ kicker and to enact a handful of new home taxes.

Kicker Alert

Yesterday there was a Senate hearing to radically change the people’s kicker tax refund law (SB 819). The politicians know they cannot steal the peoples’ kicker dollars because it is extremely popular and it is locked into the constitution. They can however change the formula and change WHO gets the money, which is where all kinds of trouble is brewing.

One crazy proposal would give kicker tax refund checks to all Oregonians, not just taxpayers who actually paid into it. Call it income redistribution on a grand scale.

The other proposal would allow the state to readjust their forecast closer to the deadline. The forecast becomes less of a forecast and more of a re-adjustment. Over-collected tax dollars in many cases would not be returned to taxpayers because the forecast would be reset early enough to capture such changes. Over-collected tax dollars would still come in, but now the politicians get to spend it because they changed the formula.

New home taxes.

On Thursday is a hearing on creating a home transfer tax. Last week was a hearing on creating a residential impact fee and another bill that would create a construction excise tax on new homes. Many of these new taxes would not require a super majority vote (as most taxes do) because they do not officially enact a tax, they instead give local governments the power to do so if they so choose. That is a given! One union lobbyist testified on both the impact fee and home excise tax bills and mentioned that Maryland has both and why not Oregon? The politicians want to tax new homes so it can fund for”¦you guessed it”¦affordable housing! Maybe people can’t afford to live in their homes because of high taxes and fees?