We’re on the rebound from the pandemic, so why are we still witnessing so many beloved businesses closing their doors? You don’t have to look much further than City Hall for the answer. Portland’s small business laws have been carefully crafted like a fine, high-ABV IPA: they make your head spin and leave a bitter taste. For the owners who have to navigate and pay for the maddeningly convoluted process of simply doing business in the city of Portland, the cards are stacked against them by design.
From the city, state, and county, thanks to a layered assault on their earnings, businesses are being smothered. Between the city’s gross receipts tax, an increase in Multnomah County’s business income tax rate, and a Metro regional government income tax as well as multiple property taxes, taxes paid by Portland businesses have increased 32% since 2019! Coupled with the highest combined individual income tax rates in the country (trailing only New York, NY), we need to pump the brakes before our most important assets go broke.
An unavoidable symptom of endemic government inefficiency and budget bloat is the ever increasing need to feed the beast. Small businesses are paying the city’s tab to a suffocating degree, a grim irony given that their innovation and entrepreneurship is what the city actually needs. Portland will never realize its potential so long as we smother the people we need to get there. It’s time to give those folks a reprieve.
Street camping has made foot traffic in our once bustling commercial centers dangerously unappealing, both for businesses and the customers who frequent them. Repeated break-ins are driving proprietors’ loss and insurance costs through the roof, and threats of harassment and assault are keeping shoppers at home. We must eliminate camping in our urban centers, maintain basic standards of cleanliness, and take tangible steps to increase public safety.
Entrepreneurship itself is the very definition of risk, with innumerable inherent barriers to success. For those willing to try, the city should encourage rather than punish their efforts. Grants to emerging businesses, streamlined approval and permitting processes, and reduced or waived fees at all steps of the process will reward those willing to put their time and energy on the line to help Portland thrive.
Good ideas should never go to waste, but for small business owners with big ideas and little experience they often do. Creating incubation, assistance, and marketing programs for new and expanding small businesses will drastically reduce the many barriers to starting up, and actively encourage innovative ideas that might otherwise be lost.
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