Christine Drazan on Corporations

Oregon's business taxes are too high

Kotek: We have to have a tax system that is adequate and fair and allows us to be competitive, and what I heard from the council is we should make some adjustments. We need to look at the CA tax and how it has to be adjusted for different sized businesses.

Drazan: Oregon's business taxes are too high. We're no longer competitive when it comes to the tax burden, but I would say this we have to fix the commercial activities tax. The corporate activities tax is a mess. We should jump the threshold higher than a million dollars. People have to start reporting for that thing at $750,000. We should adjust the threshold. We should look at it and we should look at it with an eye to actually lower the overall cost, not just rob Peter to pay Paul, not just soak the rich, not just to pick winners & losers, but to create a rational approach to taxation that is simple. That actually provides the public function and the public benefit that we all need.

Corporate Activity Tax is fattening up bureaucracy

Drazan said she would consider making the threshold higher and said a thriving economy would make up for the lost state revenue. Drazan also said some of the revenue from the so-called CAT tax is not going to schools directly, instead "fattening up bureaucracy."

"When businesses grow and thrive, it grows the pie overall for our state. We're an income tax dependent state. We need jobs. We want job growth," Drazan said. "That's what we need to have as our North Star when we're talking about tax policy, what provides for public services that are strong, stable for our most vulnerable while allowing businesses to grow so families."

Governor Kotek took umbrage with the idea that the money wasn't being spent wisely.