After voters approve increases, companies plan layoffs, shut divisions, consider moving
Barely two weeks after Oregonians increased taxes on businesses, some doomsday scenarios are coming true, with businesses employing hundreds of workers planning layoffs, shuttering divisions, delaying expansions or moving their businesses altogether.
Among the activity:
• Comnet Marketing Group Inc., a Medford-based telephone survey group, will move most of its 150 jobs within four years. It is also foregoing expansions that would have added another 150 jobs to its Oregon work force.
• Blue Line Transportation Co., a Portland trucking firm, will likely move a division that generates $2 million in annual sales to Idaho. The hikes would have boosted the division’s yearly taxes to $10,000.
• MLS Inc., a 52-year-old publishing firm that specializes in small newspaper printing, is also considering whether to remain in Eugene.
• Farmers and agricultural suppliers have also told the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation that they’ve shed workers.
• Even established companies wonder whether the new taxes will force them out of business.
The 74-year-old Star Oilco laid off one of its 15 employees in anticipation of paying the 2009 retroactive taxes. The Portland fuel distributor, which operates on margins ranging between 0.5 percent and 2 percent, would need to earn an extra $81 a day to pay its $15,000 corporate minimum tax bill. [...]
Read the whole thing for more details. Firms that stay are planning price hikes to stay in business. There are no free rides. The California disease, redux.
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