Oregon's Constitution requires a three-fifths vote in both chambers to raise taxes, and Democrats have held that much of the Legislature twice: from 2019 through 2022, and again since January 2025. In those years the Legislature passed seven bills that created, raised or extended major taxes, by Profoundd's count from the Legislative Revenue Office's session reports, and sent an eighth, a tobacco tax, to voters, who approved it. Most of that money comes from taxes that land, in the end, on consumers and workers. The record is also not one-directional: in 2021 and 2022 the same supermajority cut taxes on net, and voters repealed the largest 2025 increase in May.
What passed
| Year and bill | What it does | Who ends up paying |
|---|---|---|
| 2019, HB 3427 | Creates the Corporate Activity Tax, 0.57% of a business's Oregon sales above $1 million, for schools: about $1 billion a year, partly offset by a $423 million cut in lower income-tax rates | Shared by customers, workers and owners; the Revenue Office estimated it would raise prices about 0.39% |
| 2019, HB 2005 | Paid family and medical leave, funded by a payroll contribution of up to 1% of wages | Workers pay 60% directly; employers with 25 or more employees pay 40% |
| 2019, HB 2010 | Raises the assessment on insurers and managed-care plans from 1.5% to 2% and extends hospital assessments for the Oregon Health Plan | Health-care providers and insurers; the taxes draw federal Medicaid matching money back to the same system |
| 2019, HB 2449 | Raises the 911 tax on phone lines to $1.25 a month | Phone customers |
| 2019, HB 2270 (to voters) | Cigarette tax from $1.33 to $3.33 a pack, first tax on vaping products; approved by about two-thirds of voters in 2020 | Smokers and vapers |
| 2025, HB 2010 | Extends the provider assessments to 2032, worth $2.2 billion in 2025-27 | As above |
| 2025, HB 3940 | New tax on nicotine pouches and other oral nicotine; raises the timber-harvest tax for firefighting | Nicotine users; timber owners |
| 2025, HB 3991 (special session) | Gas tax up 6 cents to 46 cents, higher title and registration fees, transit payroll tax doubled, a diesel tax on heavy trucks from 2029: $791 million in 2025-27 | Drivers; workers, whose paychecks carry the transit tax. Voters repealed the gas, fee and payroll increases 83% to 17% in May 2026 |
Smaller increases in those sessions included court filing fees, liquor-license fees and a $20 rise in a specialty license-plate fee. In 2021 the Legislature raised about $42 million by narrowing a lower tax rate for some business owners, but its other actions left the General Fund slightly lower, and the Revenue Office wrote that federal aid "resulted in little action by way of changing tax policy." The 2022 session added a tax credit for farm overtime pay. In 2026 the Legislature kept Oregon from adopting three new federal tax breaks, preserving about $291 million over 18 months; that bill passed the House 34 to 21, short of three-fifths, and was not treated as a tax increase.
Who pays a tax is not who sends the check
A tax's legal payer is often not the person whose budget it comes out of. Excise taxes such as the gas, tobacco and nicotine taxes show up in the price at the register. Payroll taxes come out of wages: the transit tax is withheld from workers' paychecks with no employer match, and the Congressional Budget Office assumes that even the employer's share of payroll taxes is ultimately paid by workers through lower wages.
Corporate taxes are the contested case. The Congressional Budget Office and the Tax Policy Center estimate that most of the federal corporate income tax falls on shareholders and other owners of capital, with about a fifth to a quarter on workers. A 2020 study by economists Scott Baker, Stephen Teng Sun and Constantine Yannelis, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, tracked store prices and found that "approximately half of corporate tax incidence falls on consumers," and that official models underestimate that share. Oregon's Corporate Activity Tax is not an income tax at all: it taxes sales, not profits, so it applies at each step from supplier to store, and the Tax Foundation argued in 2019 testimony to the Legislature that this "raises the effective tax rate on consumers." Supporters designed the CAT with an exemption for groceries and paired it with an income-tax cut for lower brackets, which the Revenue Office valued at $423 million over two years.
The Swedish comparison
Sweden, often cited as a model of high taxes on the rich, raises most of its money from wages and spending. In 2022, according to the OECD, 28% of Swedish tax revenue came from personal income taxes, 21% from social-security contributions and 12% from payroll taxes, the highest payroll share in the OECD, while a 25% value-added tax on goods and services brought in 22%. Corporate income taxes, at a 20.6% rate, supplied 8%. Oregon, which has no sales tax, relies mainly on its personal income tax and has added its new revenue largely through taxes on sales, payrolls and products.
Sources: Oregon Legislative Revenue Office, "Revenue Measures Passed" reports for 2019, 2021 (with 2020) and 2025; Ballotpedia and Oregon House Democrats on chamber control; OPB, KGW and Baker Tilly on the 2022 and 2026 sessions; Oregon Secretary of State results for Measures 108 and 120; Paid Leave Oregon; Baker, Sun and Yannelis, NBER Working Paper 27058; Congressional Budget Office; Tax Policy Center; Tax Foundation testimony, April 23, 2019; OECD Revenue Statistics 2024, Sweden.