Speaking of oregon taxes and laws- they took everyone's right to build on their rural property away many years ago, some very small parcels were rendered worthless. My husbands tree farm was rendered worthless, he lost at least 30,000 on that, it was 20 acres of very steep ground, right next to a commune. Totally worthless to farm.
Due to high prices and anti farming laws such as that we were desperate after looking for many years and made the fatal mistake of buying this nightmare, we lost the cutflower business we moved here to grow. THANK YOU Linn county road dept. They just mowed the remains of our lower fence and a live baby Yew tree and spread wire, metal and chunks of wood all over the INSIDE of our field, and that isn't the worst they have done to us. We pay much gas tax for the tractors and farm trucks too. The environmentalist blame farmers and forest workers for loss of plants and habitat, but look to the roads, every year hundreds of acres are paved over and congestion is NOT relieved. Our rare Pink camass came from a roadside that no longer exists.
This nightmare of a farm was 2 weeks away from losing a building site forever when we saw it. Every thing was vandalized and stolen, we had to get a guard to stay here until we got the trailer moved in. This state thinks you can commute to your farm. We are almost always here and never catch the culprits that killed our birds, destroyed our fence, damaged our crops repeatedly.......
Anyone and everyone with a rural property can get an allowance to move in trailers and their extended families and do so, you should see what is down the road, a 2 acre parcel with 3 houses on it, and other buildings, one right on the road and river (supposed to be setbacks, loggers cannot log for at least 100 feet from rivers or streams) no good septic system either. Rumor has it they know a county commissioner, I believe I know which one having been totally screwed by him and is promises and lies.
We were denied farm deferral for many years, hay didn't pay enough. We cut down trees and let them rot rather than pay timber tax since the idea of tax deferral was to offset timber tax paid when trees were harvested. The reality is the tax is so high you can end up in the red from timber harvest.
We flooded badly in 1999, lost much valuable, NEW fencing and crops, were denied any help because the gov't was "fed up with bailing out Tillamook". The Power station was badly hit next to us and managed to get a 250,000 USDA grant to fix it due to the danger of PCBs ending up in the river, but the Dept of Fish and Wildlife refused to allow fixing of that because they "don't care about the people-fish were more important", they had to wait for a new leader of F&W to be allowed to fix it. Once the manager got that fixed they fired him and now LaComb Irritation District is screwing us.
Our roof is rotten from leaking skylights, the installer wouldn't fix and the manufacturer "Skyline" refuses to honor the warranty. The state agency that is supposed to help can do NOTHING.
The Lily garden moved to WA because the wacked out environmentalist had made getting water rights for farming IMPOSSIBLE here for many years.
And then there is the ethanol fiasco, many of our costs have doubled due to that so we no longer fertilize and this year I skipped slugbait. Good thing too with the cold having killed so many lilies in the field! But as our production cost rise the prices for our product plummet thanks to cheap imports.
So the big bad corporations that the media was targeting as evil and we should raise taxes on them probably won't feel a thing since they get so many other tax breaks, even the big farms. That leaves the struggling, nearly bankrupt companies to absorb that tax and we cannot even sell off unusable property to bail ourselves out. but anyone with a little chunk of property right on the river (which floods frequently) can build a house or 3.
