12 of 15 taxes defeated in Legislature (the list)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Here is a review of the taxes faced in the 2025 Legislature:

Five bad taxes defeated

• $2 billion gas tax transportation package (HB 2025) would have cost you $903 in higher taxes! The politicians waited until the final two weeks of the entire six-month session to release the details of a massive $2 billion-a-year in new road taxes. The proposal included a 50% gas tax hike, a 300% wage tax hike for buses, a new car tax, doubling of many DMV fees, new delivery vehicle taxes, a new EV tax, and a new rule that gas taxes be indexed to inflation, so they permanently go up without a vote of the people or lawmakers. It was so bad that both parties rejected the tax, and it died as the session ended on June 27^th.

•Ÿ  Stealing the people’s Kicker Income Tax Refund (SB 1177) would have cost you $500. Oregon has a surplus of $1.6 billion in over-collected taxes from the last budget and, by law, must return it to the taxpayers who were overtaxed. The average Kicker Tax Refund expected next year is between $400 and $600 per Oregon taxpayer. The people put the Kicker law into the state Constitution so politicians could not touch it without a vote of the people. SB 1177 sneakily bypasses the people by using an emergency-style loophole, which would have allowed lawmakers to amend the Constitution if they could muster a 66% vote margin.  The bill died.

•Ÿ  83% hotel tax increase to pay for wildlife programs. HB 2977 would have hiked the hotel-lodging tax by 83% to pay for unrelated wildlife programs, which has nothing to do with hotels. A number of years ago, Oregon’s hotel tax nearly doubled under the promise that it would be used to attract so many more tourists that the tax would pay for itself. Instead, Oregon’s tourism lags below the national average. One coastal tourism expert discovered Oregon hotel taxes are so high that more and more people cannot afford to dine out and instead eat in their hotel rooms to save money.

•Ÿ  $122 million Google/Facebook tax. SB 686 would have forced Google and Facebook to pay $122 million to a private nonprofit run by unelected unknowns that would then dole out the money to local Oregon newspapers to subsidize their journalism. Because government never touched the money, the politicians declared it wasn’t really a “tax” and therefore could be passed with fewer votes (as normal tax increases require a 60% vote margin to pass).   This bill died.

•Ÿ  3% property tax. SB 712 pushes more property owners to pay the maximum 3 percent tax increase every year based on maximum assessed value. This would have cost some property owners thousands.  This tax was defeated.

Three bad tax hikes that did pass

•Ÿ  Tax hikes on marriage, hospitals, and drivers.   SB 97 allowed Counties to jack-up the marriage license fee 250% to pay for court costs.  This marriage tax comes as young married couples are in an alarming decline in Oregon.  HB 2010 is a $500 million tax on hospitals and health care insurance companies.  HB 2931 creates an Interstate 5 Bridge Toll in order to toll people using the I-5 Columbia River bridge to pay for replacement costs.  Some estimates say the toll could be as high as $20 to enter or exit Oregon. (KATU-TV 4/17/25)