NFIB State Director Anthony Smith explains the punishing effect Senate Bill 1528 will have on small businesses
NFIB Oregon State Director Anthony Smith took to the airwaves February 26 to give listeners of the Gator & Denise Show on KYKN 1430 AM a warning about the punishing effects on small business Senate Bill 1528 will have if it passes.
“Legislators who are proposing Senate Bill 1528 are saying since we already have an Oregon policy [on small-business tax rates], we don’t need the federal policy,” Smith summarized as the proponents’ view. But Smith corrected that thinking by showing the superiority of the federal policy, “Why would you take away a tax cut from upwards of 300,000 Oregonians just because 22,000 already save money from our own [state] policy.”
Smith provided a brief history of Oregon’s small-business tax cut, which emanated from the ‘Grand Bargain’ that the 2013 session of the Legislature produced. He pointed out that only partnerships and S corps were beneficiaries of that tax cut, sole proprietors were not. That, however, is not the case with the federal tax reform, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which passed last December and was signed into law by President Trump.
“This once-in-a-generation federal tax reform legislation was a huge victory for American businesses, large and small. For small businesses, specifically, the creation of a new 20 percent deduction on pass-through business income was an especially important piece of the larger package of reforms,” Smith writes in his latest Salem Business Journal column, which will appear in March.
“Although similar to the new federal policy, the Oregon policy is more restrictive than the new, inclusive federal policy that allows the 20 percent deduction for most small businesses, with very few exceptions. What this means is that while about 22,000 Oregon tax filers currently qualify to use the Oregon Small Business Tax Cut, upwards of 300,000 Oregonians would lose a combined total of over $1 billion in tax savings over the next several years if the Oregon Legislature decides to disconnect from the federal code.”
On the Gator & Denise Show, Smith also discussed NFIB’s lead role in lobbying Congress for a small-business tax cut, which it hadn’t considered in earnest before, why he thinks the Oregon Senate’s passage of SB 1528 might be in violation of the state constitution, and why the revenues from SB 1528 are not needed, given the state’s current projected budget surplus as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Click the graphic of Gator & Denise below to hear the 20-minute interview with Smith.
Related News Releases
February 23—Comment on Today’s Senate Vote on Oregon Taxes
February 14—Oregon Senate Considers Tax Hike on Small Businesses
