Making Money and Paying the Corporate Minimum Tax
If you ask a corporation, “Did you make money last year?” its response may well be, “Who’s asking?”
October 1, 2009
Charles Sheketoff
Chuck Sheketoff is a founder of the Oregon Center for Public Policy and former Executive Director. Incorporated in 1995, the Center was launched with Chuck as its first executive director after Chuck received the "public interest pioneer award" from the Stern Family Fund in September, 1997. Prior to starting the Center, Chuck lobbied the Oregon legislature on tax policies and on human services programs' policies and budgets on behalf of legal aid clients (1992 to 1996) and the low-income clients of the Oregon Law Center (1997).
I Want Climate Change
I want climate change.
No, I’m not talking about an increase in Earth’s temperature that would melt the polar ice caps.
May 1, 2009
While Your Investments Were Shrinking . . . .You Helped Wal-Mart
While Oregon families have seen their Oregon 529 plans turn into 0.529 plans, their 401K plans turn into 0.401K plans, their homes’ values shrink, and interest rates on their savings accounts and CDs drop to next to nothing, taxpayers in the State of Oregon have been helping Wal-Mart make a nice return on its money.
April 23, 2009
Here’s Hoping for a Monty Python Tax
In a hilarious (albeit adult-only) skit on how the British government should address a fiscal deficit with taxation (youtube.com link), Monty Python’s Terry Jones says “To boost the British economy, I’d tax all foreigners living abroad.” (family-friendly WMV of just quote).
April 10, 2009
End Oregon’s Rob-Peter-to-Pay-Paul Funding Schemes
When lawmakers conceive of a new or expanded public program, they typically provide details to the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee, who determine its cost.
March 2, 2009
I Love New York . . . Economists
Sure, New York has brought us some Big Apple-sized stinkers of late, from the Wall Street derivative house of cards to the Bernard Madoff massive Ponzi scheme.
December 7, 2008
Hands Off Our School Children’s Recession Cookie Jar
There’s little doubt that Oregon’s economy is sliding and that state revenues will not be adequate to meet this and the next budget cycle’s demands for public services.
October 4, 2008
A $75,000 Bargain for Oregon Taxpayers
Minnesotan Garrison Keillor once joked, “I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
September 1, 2008
A Tax Day Message from Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin learned that in 1942 the federal government was going to undertake “unprecedented income tax collections” to support the war effort, so he volunteered to write a popular song to aid in the tax collection effort.
April 15, 2008
Oregon Lottery Scratch-its: The New Joe Camel
Years ago, facing legal and political pressure for marketing cancer sticks to youth, R.J. Reynolds put out to pasture its infamous Joe Camel mascot.
January 31, 2008