When “Joe the Business Owner” received a broadcast email from an acquaintance who works at a university who urged his mail recipients approve the measures because the ‘rich’ can afford it, JTBO sent one of his own which he shared with me.
He gave me permission to reprint it here. I think you’ll find it illuminating:

I want to inform you some more facts of the matter from the other side of the fence.

There are two proposals on the table and I am going to try to give you a perspective from this side or the corporate side of the fence:

First of all I find the advertisements for this measure and information not totally accurate.

As the owner of subchapter S corp, it is true we pay a 10 dollar excise fee to the state of Oregon each year.

 In addition we pay the following items:

 We match the social security on every employee :  or 7.625% per employee up to the maximum then we pay .23718 up to 7,000 for futa trimet, Suta and that changes on a graduated scale, then we pay into employee medical current at 437 per month per employee, and we contribute 15% of each employee’s salary into a retirement account.  In addition we pay Workman’s comp on all wages from 1.250218% to 1.021218 % on a graduated income bracket.  In addition we have sick pay, vacation pay, and holiday pay. And, oh yes, a big one is the City of Portland and County of Multnomah tax which runs us about 9547.00 per year.  And then there are various licensing fees, and state audit fees, and education fees, and then each one of those employees pays tax on the income we pay them.  And also we pay a tax on personal corporate assets. We also pay property tax on the building we rent, as it passed through by the landlord.

 One big item to remember is when they say corporations pay no income tax, that is true if you’re an S corp., llc, llp, or some other form of a business, but not a C corp.  The reason for that is that in accounting theory there is no such thing as a corporate profit in those types of entities so the income is distributed out to the owners on a K1 based on that person’s share of ownership and the person pays the tax on the money as if it were ordinary income.  So I for one do not believe that the statement that S corps do not pay tax, because the owners do, whether they get the cash or leave it in the business, and it is taxed in the bracket rate as ordinary income.  The C Corporate rate is up to 39 % FEDERAL AND OREGON IS 6.6% CORPORATE RATE,  for C corps but all the rest of us pay income tax on the profits of the entity based on share of ownership and the portion of profit that flows through to the individual.  Further, one of these measures is going to have gross sales charges, not even based off of net profit.  That means if you sell 15,000,000.00 worth of product, you pay a fee, regardless of the profit if you have any, on that sale.

 I know you come the world of academia, but be aware, Oregon is a state that needs to foster a business environment. I read a recent statistic that small business, 10 employees or less, employs 80% of the people in the private work force.  These are not the Giant Corporations but small businesses, and this is the group of people this is going to hurt.  As a small business owner, we will lay off one of our seven employees if this measure passes, in order to keep the cost of our operation inline. Remember, our work force is a variable cost, not a fixed cost, and no one managing a company can reduce fixed costs, so you focus on the variable costs. 

I hope this brings a level of truth to the matter on the issue here.