I was initially on board with this, we should absolutely be taxing large corporations more and using that revenue to fund those struggling to get by. But the details of this bill seem to me to be problematic. This video by the Oregon Center for Public Policy (a non-partisan/non-profit research organization) does a great job of breaking it down for anyone interested and for those who aren’t I’ll summarize my takeaways below.

• It will inadvertently redirect funds from the existing Oregon General Fund which pays for critical public services like education and since the rebate is likely to be considered taxable income it means a percentage of the existing state tax revenue is likely to be exported to the federal government.

• The extra income could end up reducing Oregonians’ eligibility for income-limited public benefits. The bill aims to reimburse what financial support is lost as a result of the rebates but that could create a cycle of disqualification and reimbursement, all being paid for by the state rebate fund rather than the federal funds currently paying for those services.

• This fund could be a lot more effectively utilized to target those who would meaningfully benefit from the extra cash rather than splitting it evenly amongst all Oregonians, including the extremely wealthy among us.

• Lastly, this would take up political bandwidth and make it difficult for any further corporate tax legislation to pass in the near/mid future.

I generally think good now is better than perfect later but I think this bill has some significant unintended consequences that will effectively hand Oregon tax dollars over to the federal government while not doing enough for those in need of assistance and I believe we can do much better.