Portland voters impose a 1% “clean energy” tax on large and big-box businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And are then outraged that those businesses pass the costs on to customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emphasis added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terry Wiesner stared down at his Safeway grocery store receipt in confusion in mid-September after he noticed being charged an extra 3 cents for buying a package of $2.99 napkins. The 3 cent charge was listed as a tax.<\/em>
He called over a store attendant while still in the self-checkout line at the Southeast Woodstock Boulevard branch and asked about the charge. The worker pointed to a laminated sign nearby.<\/em>
Portland instituted a\u00a0voter-approved clean energy surcharge<\/a>\u00a0in January, imposing a 1 percent tax on paper products, wine, beer, household items and other products, the sign said. The surcharge began appearing on Safeway customers\u2019 receipts on Sept. 9 and people should contact the City of Portland if they had any concerns, according to the notice.<\/em>
\u201cI didn\u2019t remember voting for any kind of tax,\u201d said Wiesner, 74. \u201cI later learned that this was meant to be a tax on businesses, not the people.<\/strong> Frankly, it just made me angry. It wasn\u2019t about the 3 cents, it\u2019s about the spirit of this charge and how it\u2019d been passed off to me.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nTo be fair, it’s entirely possible this has <\/em>been passed off as something that’d “just affect business”; Portland, like Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth and now Rochester, is run by people who’ve never worked outside public employment, non-profits or academia. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portland voters impose a 1% “clean energy” tax on large and big-box businesses. And are then outraged that those businesses pass the costs on to customers. Emphasis added: Terry Wiesner stared down at his Safeway grocery store receipt in confusion in mid-September after he noticed being charged an extra 3 cents for buying a package […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,24,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-culture-war","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72553,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72552\/revisions\/72553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}