'Yes on 79' campaign inaccurately suggests real estate tax is real ...

continues to insist someone out there is talking? about imposing a real estate transfer tax, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

Realtors and other groups who want to enshrine a real estate transfer tax ban in the Oregon Constitution ran a hefty ad in the Portland Tribune last week and in The Sunday Oregonian. The Yes on 79 campaign states:

"Oregon homeowners have been targeted with a new tax on the sale or transfer of real estate, a new tax that some have made a legislative priority."

The print ad joins TV and radio commercials that also talk about what appears to be a pending, imminent, any day now tax on real estate. The group's first TV ad features a cute yellow house in a Lucha Libre wrestling match with a masked man. Home sales have taken a beating, right? "Now there's talk of a property transfer tax," says the announcer.

Where, exactly, is this talk happening? PolitiFact Oregon wanted to know.

In the group?s second TV and radio ad, called "Double Whammy," Larry Dennis of Northeast Portland says, "We all are paying more taxes, house values are going down, and now they want to tax us again. It's not fair, it's not right."

We realize home values are not what they were, but who wants to tax us again?

On the campaign's website is this language: "Once again, there is talk of a sales tax on real estate targeting homeowners."

By now the overuse of the passive voice is killing us.

Who is talking about a sales tax? Because as anyone who follows this topic knows, there is a state prohibition on such a tax. The state law not only prohibits a state tax, but it also forbids cities and counties from levying one. (Only Washington County has one -- 0.1 percent -- and that?s because it was grandfathered in.)

In fact, we checked out a Voters' Pamphlet statement by Oregon Realtors' that "one of the state's largest governments made charging this tax one of their top priorities just this year."

We ruled the statement Pants on Fire because the only evidence the campaign provided was a list of legislative agenda items from the City of Portland. No bill was drafted to charge a tax.

Portland, like other cities and counties, is mainly opposed to the idea that the state can "pre-empt" local government in matters of taxation and regulation. Wanting to get rid of such a pre-emption is not the same as wanting to charge a tax, in our view.

PolitiFact Oregon contacted campaign spokesman Jon Coney, just in case a real estate tax had been proposed and adopted when we weren't looking.

Coney said the campaign was referring to "all the talk that's been going on at the legislative level." You can read that lengthy list of legislative attempts that went nowhere in this PolitiFact Oregon analysis. We gave it a Half True ruling.

-- Janie Har
Follow me on Twitter/janiehar1

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/10/yes_on_79_campaign_inaccuratel.html

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