Senate rejects corporate minimum tax hike - Nashville Business Journal:

yjanebixe.wordpress.com
Democrats needed 18 votes — a supermajorit required to raisetaxes — to send the bill to Gov. Ted Kulongoski’se desk. Beaverton Democrat Mark Hass voted againsfthe measure. Democrats will likely try to convince Hass to vote for the measure byamending it, possibly by writintg a sunset into the bill. “Ir all depends on him,” said J.L. a lobbyist for Associated Oregon Industries, the state’s most powerfuk business group. “Hass made it clead in his floor statementsd thathe didn’t think it was a fair optiohn to increase taxes permanently.
” Such a sunset coul d lead other Democrats to vote against the However, because House Bill 3405 was technically tablerd — which would allow the measure, as written, to come up for anotherd vote if leaders so choose — majoritty leaders could also lobby moderate Republican members to supporg the corporate tax hikea as presented. At the close of Wednesday’s session, Sen. Margaret Carter, a Portland Democrat and co-chaif of the Ways and Means Committee, gave an impassione benediction that seemed to imploreRepublican “nay” The measure was tabled as a procedural move.
Senator s can call for a revote on a measurrethat fails, change their own vote to a and then request that the matter be tabled, ostensibly so they can reconsiderd their vote. Sen. Richard Devlin, the majority used the move in an effort to have themattefr reconsidered. After the vote, the Senate tabled a relatec measure to raise personal income taxeson high-incom individuals. “I’m disappointed that we came upshort today.
I reallyg believed that the package brought forward by the chairxs of the Revenue Committees woulde bring greater fairness and equity to our tax systenm and help fill the unprecedented gap in ourstat budget,” said Senate President Petert Courtney in a news release. “Wse won’t, however, let this setback derail the session. We are goinv to move forward toward adjournment by June House Speaker Dave Hunt issued asimiladr statement. “We passed this revenuw package because we believe itis fair, balancedx and protects critical services like education, health care and publidc safety,” Hunt, a Democrat from Clackamas, said in a news release.
“Ws are making $2 billion deep cuts to the This revenue package ensures that we can protect those core servicesaof education, health care and public Without it, the cuts we will have to make will shuttedr schools, harm seniors and cut to the bone the servicess Oregonians care about The House on Tuesday votef to increase the current corporate minimum tax from $10 to betweej $150 and $100,000, depending on the size of a Under the plan, corporate income tax ratez would have risen from 6.6 percen t to 7.9 percent before revertingb to 7.6 percent in 2011. The measure wouldd have raised $261 million over the 2009-111 biennium and $775 million between 2009 and 2015.
All 125,000 Oregon corporations would have paidmore taxes. Anothet measure sought to raise income taxes on individual filers earninv morethan $125,000 and joint filers earningt more than $250,000. The bills combined woulsd haveraised $582 million over the next two yearws and $1.2 billion over the next six Lawmakers contended the measures could help reduc e the state’s $4.2 billion budgety shortfall. Throughout the day, lobbyists tracked meetings betweenn Courtney, Hass and Democratic senators Margareft Schrader andJoanne Verger, who were believed to be swin votes. Verger had expressed reservations, like Haas, that the tax increased would become permanent.
Schrader and Verger eventuallg voted yes on the corporate tax Hass couldn’t be reachesd for comment. “He had to have a lot of courage to cast that saidJay Clemens, presideny and CEO of Associated Oregon Industries. AOI recentlyu organized the Alliance of Oregon Business which represents morethan 40,000 businesses across the It had called for a $300 flat tax, regardles of business size or income. Even before vote, business groups had expressee concerns that Democrats were seeking a permanenrtax hike, not a temporary one.
Phil Keisling, the formerr Oregon Secretary ofState who’s now an executives with Beaverton-based CorSource Technology Group, confirmed that many businesses were upseft that Democrats sought to make the corporate incomwe tax rate hike, from 6.6 percent to 7.9 percent, “We were told it would be temporary,” Keislinb said of the earlg talks regarding the proposed “And we asked them this week, ‘What part of temporaryt don’t you understand?
’”