NFIB calls for delaying Oregon’s new Corporate Activity Tax
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anthony Smith, NFIB Oregon State Director, [email protected]
or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, [email protected]
SALEM, Ore., April 8, 2020—The following statement was issued by Anthony Smith, Oregon state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, following yesterday’s release of NFIB’s monthly Small Business Economic Trends report (aka the Optimism Index), which showed the largest monthly decline in the report’s 47-year history.
“We’re hoping that new federal programs, like the Paycheck Protection Program Loans, will keep small businesses afloat and their employees paid in the short-term, but we need to start looking at state-level solutions for what’s inevitably going to be a medium- and long-term cash flow problem for Oregon small businesses. An obvious choice would be to immediately delay the implementation of the new Corporate Activity Tax (CAT).
“The CAT is a brand-new tax on gross receipts, not profits. These dollars do not flow into the state’s general fund – they are dedicated to new spending programs that weren’t in place before this current public health emergency and the ensuing economic crisis. An estimated 40,000 businesses, employing hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, are subject to this new tax. If faced with paying the tax or keeping their employees on the payroll, what are these businesses supposed to do?”
About the Small Business Economic Trends (SBET)
The NFIB Research Center has collected Small Business Economic Trends data with quarterly surveys since the 4th quarter of 1973 and monthly surveys since 1986. Survey respondents are drawn from NFIB’s membership. Except for this month, the report is released on the second Tuesday of each month. This survey was conducted in February 2020.
The SBET is one of the few archival data sets on small business, particularly when research questions address business operations rather than opinions. Today, it’s the largest, longest-running data set on small business economic conditions available, used by the Federal Reserve, presidential administrations, Congress, and governors and state legislatures across the nation as the gold standard measurement on the economic health of Main Street enterprises.
Click here to read yesterday’s national news release and here for a one-page history of the SBET.
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For more than 77 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since our founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.
National Federation of Independent Business/Oregon
3340 Commercial St. S.E. Suite 210
Salem, OR 97302
503-364-4450
www.nfib.com/oregon
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