Do we Oregonians have the vision to see the taxation monster we’ve created and the courage to repeal Measures — 5 and 50? Tax analyst Bennett Minton is shaking his head over the property tax inequities he sees firsthand…

Opinion: My property tax bill came. I’m shaking my head.

By Bennett Minton, Guest Columnist
The Oregonian
Updated Nov 14, 2019; Posted Nov 13, 2019

Minton is a former federal tax legislative analyst who occasionally testifies before the Oregon Legislature on behalf of Tax Fairness Oregon.

Excerpt:
The arrival of my property tax bill has me shaking my head – but not for the reason you suspect. I’m thinking about its inequities, of which I’m a beneficiary.

I was a tax wonk in Washington, D.C. for three decades, so I spend too much time thinking about taxes, the purpose of which is to fund whatever We the People want. (I offer no view about spending priorities.) When I moved to Oregon last year, I kept catching glimpses of the state code and thinking “You do what?”

Wandering through neighborhoods in search of a home, I quickly learned to check the property tax, because that variable would be almost as important as the price of the house. No dummy, I bought a house with a $1,500 bill, rather than any of similar houses at similar prices within a couple miles whose tax bill was $8,000 or $9,000 – a difference of $500 or $600 in my monthly payment.

Why the gap? Because in 1997, when Oregon voters passed Measure 50, which limited the increase in a home’s assessed value to 3 percent annually, my neighborhood was a red-lined area of town – banks would not lend under normal business terms because it was predominantly black. (Redlining, invented by the federal government but later outlawed, persists.)

That slowly changed. Redlining went away after white “pioneers” began to invest. Young professionals began moving in (displacing African Americans). Now it’s one of the hip neighborhoods: racially mixed, eclectic businesses, new construction, close to downtown. And no matter its market value, my house will continue to generate a tiny tax obligation to the county compared to those in nearby neighborhoods.

And that’s just the homeowner tax. The same principle applies to business real property. Two gas stations in different parts of town with the same market values have wildly different tax bills.
Someday voters will see the monster they’ve created and repeal Measure 50 (and its precursor Measure 5) – or revolt with some other expression of outrage but without foreseeing the consequences. The greatest obstacle to a rational tax code is that voters get to decide on its particulars because some advocate with deep pockets circulated a petition.

James Madison warned in a letter he wrote in 1782: “We have shed our blood in the glorious cause in which we are engaged; we are ready to shed the last drop in its defense. Nothing is above our courage, except only (with shame I speak it) the courage to tax ourselves.”