MEASURE 97 – GROSS RECEIPTS TAX

Measure 97, (formerly known as IP 28) Would Cost Oregon Businesses & Consumers BillionsMeasure 97 is a costly and damaging proposal that will appear on the Nov. 2016 Oregon statewide ballot. The Tigard Chamber has joined the coalition of small businesses, local chambers and consumers from across Oregon in opposing Measure 97 for the following reasons:
•The nonpartisan Legislative Revenue Office has estimated that Measure 97 would increase taxes on Oregon sales by more than $6 billion per two-year budget cycle – by far the largest tax increase in our state’s history.

•Because Measure 97 would be a tax on gross sales – not profits – businesses would be required to pay the tax regardless of whether they’re making a profit or not. That would force many employers to raise prices or cut jobs in order to stay in business.
•Measure 97 would impose billions in new taxes on the sales of products and services that Oregonians buy and use every day – food, electricity, insurance, health care, medicine, gasoline and other essentials. That would especially hurt small businesses and families on fixed incomes.
•Measure 97 is like a hidden sales tax, except worse, because it would be applied at multiple stages of the supply chain. By the time a product goes from the manufacturer to distributor to retailer and ultimately reaches the consumer, it may have been taxed multiple times. This “tax on a tax” would make Oregon products more expensive, and Oregon companies less competitive.
•Ultimately the costs of this huge new tax increase, if passed, will fall on Oregon small and medium-sized businesses, as well as Oregon consumers and families, in the form of higher prices for almost everything we buy.
•Finally, there’s no guarantee that the billions in new taxes from Measure 97 would go where proponents claim they would.  In fact, there is no plan and no accountability for how this huge new tax increase would be used — it’s a blank check for politicians to spend as they please for years to come.
To learn more about Measure 97 click here or to join the coalition forming to defeat this flawed measure click here or please call 877-575-9950.