{
  "asOf": "2026-10-31",
  "scope": "Public evidence for a Portland household tax and city comparison tool. This ledger separates statutory costs, descriptive trends, research estimates and service performance. No private conversations are evidence.",
  "verdicts": [
    {
      "id": "affordability",
      "question": "Do Portland taxes make living here less affordable?",
      "verdict": "Direct tax costs are measurable; the overall affordability ranking depends on the household.",
      "copy": "Compare the dollars left after taxes, housing, childcare and transportation. A high top income-tax rate alone does not tell a renter, homeowner, parent or retiree which city is more affordable.",
      "evidenceIds": ["local-tax-exposure", "location-amenities", "pfa-equity-audit"]
    },
    {
      "id": "migration",
      "question": "Do taxes discourage people from living here?",
      "verdict": "Evidence supports some response, with substantial variation and uncertainty about the local magnitude.",
      "copy": "Taxes can influence moves. The effect depends on income, work, family ties and how easily someone can cross a tax boundary. Neither 'taxes never matter' nor 'all departures are tax flight' fits the evidence.",
      "evidenceIds": ["pfa-migration-2026", "millionaire-migration-2025", "california-prop30", "irs-migration"]
    },
    {
      "id": "business",
      "question": "Do business taxes affect jobs and investment?",
      "verdict": "Yes in studied settings; effects differ by business structure and mobility.",
      "copy": "Business taxes can affect where firms operate. Evidence from multistate firms does not supply a reliable job-loss forecast for a Portland restaurant, startup or sole proprietor.",
      "evidenceIds": ["business-reallocation"]
    },
    {
      "id": "service-value",
      "question": "Does Portland provide poor services for its taxes?",
      "verdict": "Specific shortfalls are documented. A single citywide value-for-money ranking is not established by these sources.",
      "copy": "Judge services separately: what was funded, who received it, whether outcomes improved and what it cost. Independent audits show both improvements and unresolved problems. Spending totals alone cannot measure value.",
      "evidenceIds": ["fisc-comparison", "boec-audit-2026", "shs-audit-2025", "pfa-equity-audit", "pfa-seat-memo-2026", "insights-survey"]
    }
  ],
  "evidence": [
    {
      "id": "pfa-migration-2026",
      "title": "Mult-No-More? The Migration Effects of Multnomah County's Preschool For All Income Tax",
      "authors": "Karen Conway, John Iselin and Jon Rork",
      "year": 2026,
      "published": "2026-04-06",
      "kind": "Quasi-experimental working paper; not a peer-reviewed publication at verification",
      "geography": "Multnomah County and interstate moves",
      "claim": "A local study finds elevated departures, especially among households likely to owe PFA; inflow estimates are less robust.",
      "establishes": "IRS flows through 2022 and ACS through 2024, synthetic difference-in-differences and other comparisons support a tax contribution.",
      "limits": "Authors cannot definitively establish causality. Pandemic, protests, other policy changes, the Washington border and incomplete preschool rollout complicate interpretation; they characterize estimates as an upper bound.",
      "findings": [
        "Modelled 2022 PFA revenue erosion: about $16m, 8.5% of the conventional no-migration revenue estimate; specification IQR about $10m–$22m.",
        "Modelled Oregon revenue erosion: $78.6m, 2.7% of state income tax revenue FROM MULTNOMAH COUNTY, not 2.7% of statewide collections."
      ],
      "guardrail": "Revenue erosion is a counterfactual estimate, not an observed year-over-year collections decline. An IQR across model specifications is not a statistical confidence interval.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://www.opb.org/pdf/ConwayIselinRork2026_1776369046481.pdf", "locator": "Abstract; printed pp. 4, 10, 32–35; sections 6.3–6.4", "quote": "our analysis cannot definitively establish causality"},
        {"url": "https://www.reed.edu/newsroom/press-releases/2026/reed-college-economist-co-authors-study-on-migration-effects-of-multnomah-county-preschool-for-all-tax.html", "locator": "University announcement identifies working-paper status"},
        {"url": "https://github.com/johniselin-econ/multnomah-county-tax", "locator": "Authors' replication materials; linked by manuscript"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "millionaire-migration-2025",
      "title": "Taxing the Rich: How Incentives and Embeddedness Shape Millionaire Tax Flight",
      "authors": "Cristobal Young and Ithai Lurie",
      "year": 2025,
      "published": "2025-08-26",
      "kind": "Peer-reviewed empirical research, American Journal of Sociology 131(2):371–407",
      "geography": "United States, interstate migration of top earners",
      "claim": "Tax incentives affect migration at the margin, while social and professional ties constrain mobility.",
      "establishes": "Uses 3.9 million observations over seven years and the 2017 federal tax change and pandemic as natural experiments.",
      "limits": "Evidence about top earners and state boundaries does not estimate Portland's local-tax effect or represent every household above the much lower PFA threshold. Do not interpret marginal migration effects as zero effects.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/737165", "locator": "Publisher abstract and article metadata", "quote": "tax incentives influence migration at the margin"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "california-prop30",
      "title": "Behavioral Responses to State Income Taxation of High Earners: Evidence from California",
      "authors": "Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu",
      "year": 2024,
      "kind": "Peer-reviewed empirical research, AEJ: Economic Policy 16(1):34–86",
      "geography": "California, 2012 Proposition 30",
      "claim": "A high-income tax increase produced migration and taxable-income responses in this setting.",
      "establishes": "Administrative data and matched out-of-state controls examine a reform raising marginal rates by up to 3 percentage points. The estimated additional departing share of the top-bracket residential tax base was 0.8% in 2013.",
      "findings": ["Estimated erosion of the reform's windfall revenue: 45.2% in one year and 60.9% within two years, largely from the intensive margin among people who stayed."],
      "limits": "Revenue erosion is not the percentage of taxpayers who moved. Changes in reported taxable income are not automatically lost economic output. A California reform is not a Portland forecast, and erosion does not mean the reform raised no additional revenue.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20200500", "locator": "Abstract; full paper and replication package linked", "quote": "driven largely by the intensive margin"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "business-reallocation",
      "title": "State Taxation and the Reallocation of Business Activity: Evidence from Establishment-Level Data",
      "authors": "Xavier Giroud and Joshua Rauh",
      "year": 2019,
      "kind": "Peer-reviewed empirical research, Journal of Political Economy 127(3):1262–1316",
      "geography": "US establishments of multistate firms, 1977–2011",
      "claim": "State taxes influence business location and employment, particularly in industries able to relocate.",
      "establishes": "Census microdata distinguish C corporations from pass-through firms. Corporate-tax changes affect C-corporation activity; personal-tax changes affect pass-through activity. About half the measured response reflects reallocation between states.",
      "findings": ["Printed p.1265: a 1 percentage-point corporate-tax increase corresponds to about 0.5% fewer establishments per C corporation in a state; the analogous personal-tax change is about 0.4% for pass-through firms."],
      "limits": "Primary sample: firms with at least 100 employees operating in at least two states. These estimates cannot be directly applied to Portland's small local businesses or used as a universal jobs calculator. The abstract's elasticity terminology should not be converted without the paper's definition.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701357", "locator": "Abstract and article metadata", "quote": "strongest for firms in tradable and footloose industries"},
        {"url": "https://www.columbia.edu/~xg2285/Taxes.pdf", "locator": "Published manuscript, printed p.1265, sample and percentage-point interpretation"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "location-amenities",
      "title": "Urban Population and Amenities: The Neoclassical Model of Location",
      "authors": "David Albouy and Bryan A. Stuart",
      "year": 2020,
      "publicationNote": "Online article November 2019; International Economic Review 61(1), February 2020, pp.127–158",
      "kind": "Peer-reviewed spatial economic model estimated with metropolitan data",
      "geography": "US metropolitan areas",
      "claim": "Earnings, housing costs, amenities and housing supply jointly shape where people live.",
      "establishes": "A model using wages and housing costs explains about half the cross-metro variation in population and density; quality of life and housing-production constraints matter.",
      "limits": "This is not a causal evaluation of Portland taxes or a dollar valuation of current city services. Geography and climate are amenities too; not everything people value is produced by government.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33542584/", "locator": "Author abstract and final publication metadata"},
        {"url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7857490/", "locator": "Author manuscript; abstract and general-equilibrium model"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "local-tax-exposure",
      "title": "Personal Income Tax Filing and Payment Information",
      "authors": "City of Portland Revenue Division",
      "year": 2026,
      "kind": "Current administrative tax rules",
      "geography": "Metro and Multnomah County tax jurisdictions",
      "claim": "The two local high-income taxes do not impose the same cost on every Portland household.",
      "establishes": "In 2026 SHS is 1% above $128,000 single or $205,000 joint taxable income. PFA is 1.5% above $125,000/$200,000, plus another 1.5% above $250,000/$400,000. Only income above each threshold is taxed at that tier.",
      "limits": "These are taxable-income thresholds, not salaries. Being exempt from SHS/PFA does not mean paying no state or local taxes. Work location and sourced income matter: moving residence across a boundary does not necessarily eliminate liability.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://www.portland.gov/revenue/personal-tax", "locator": "Personal Income Tax Rates and Exemption Thresholds; Residency Status", "quote": "For non-residents, Metro taxes only your income from Metro sources."}]
    },
    {
      "id": "irs-migration",
      "title": "SOI Tax Stats: Migration Data",
      "authors": "Internal Revenue Service",
      "year": 2026,
      "dataThrough": "Filing-year flows 2022–2023, latest available on the source page at verification",
      "kind": "Official administrative descriptive data",
      "geography": "County-to-county and state-to-state flows, including Multnomah County",
      "claim": "Tax-return address changes reveal migration patterns, not why people moved.",
      "establishes": "Files report returns (roughly households), exemptions (roughly people), and adjusted gross income. State-level tables also break out income and age.",
      "limits": "Matched tax filers are not the entire population. AGI is neither wealth nor a recurring amount of future lost revenue. County totals do not identify each mover's income or motive. IRS changed its matching process for 2022–2023; mark the series break before comparing trends.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-migration-data", "locator": "US population migration data; 2022–2023 series-change notice"},
        {"url": "https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/2223inpublicmigdoc.pdf", "locator": "2022–2023 data user guide; variable units and suppression"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "fisc-comparison",
      "title": "Methodology Used to Create the Fiscally Standardized Cities Database",
      "authors": "Adam H. Langley, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy",
      "year": 2020,
      "kind": "Primary fiscal-data methodology",
      "geography": "US central cities and their overlapping local governments",
      "claim": "Comparable local finance requires including the overlapping governments serving residents.",
      "establishes": "FiSC adds municipal finances to allocated county, school-district and special-district finances, using population, enrollment and service-area shares.",
      "limits": "Allocations are estimates, not household tax bills. Harmonized finance does not itself measure service quality or efficiency. Cost, need, capital cycles, pension obligations and government responsibilities still differ. Use matched years and functions, and show state funding separately.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/methodology-used-create-fiscally-standardized-cities-database-0/", "locator": "Methodology summary"},
        {"url": "https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/langley_wp20al1.pdf", "locator": "September 2020 methodology, allocation rules and limitations"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "boec-audit-2026",
      "title": "Emergency Communications has dramatically improved 911 staffing and call wait times; further efforts could help avoid setbacks",
      "authors": "Portland City Auditor, Audit Services",
      "year": 2026,
      "published": "2026-06-24",
      "kind": "Independent government performance audit",
      "geography": "Portland Bureau of Emergency Communications, serving Multnomah County",
      "claim": "911 answering improved substantially but still missed the national standard.",
      "establishes": "Average call-answer wait fell from 77 seconds in July 2022 to 18 seconds in January 2026. As of April 2026 the bureau still missed the standard of answering 90% of calls within 15 seconds. Hiring and training improved staffing; call volume also fell.",
      "limits": "Call-answer time is not police or ambulance arrival time. Average wait and a 90%-within-threshold standard are different statistics. This documents performance, not a causal return on a particular tax or an intercity efficiency rank.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://www.portland.gov/auditor/audit-services/news/2026/6/24/emergency-communications-has-dramatically-improved-911", "locator": "Background: staffing shortages; Figure 2; training results"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "shs-audit-2025",
      "title": "Supportive Housing Services Follow-Up Audit",
      "authors": "Metro Auditor",
      "year": 2025,
      "published": "2025-11-19",
      "dataThrough": "September 2025",
      "kind": "Independent government performance audit follow-up",
      "geography": "Three-county Metro SHS program",
      "claim": "SHS oversight improved, but reliable outcome and cost reporting still needed work.",
      "establishes": "Of 18 earlier recommendations, 9 were implemented, 7 in process and 2 unimplemented. All five long-term planning/communications recommendations were implemented. Five of six data-reporting recommendations remained in process. County funding allocations still did not match need.",
      "limits": "Recommendation completion is not a count of households housed. Reporting weaknesses do not prove every reported result is false. Use this follow-up rather than presenting January 2024 findings as unchanged in 2026.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://www.oregonmetro.gov/audits/supportive-housing-services-follow-audit-0", "locator": "Status of 2024 audit recommendations; What we found"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "pfa-equity-audit",
      "title": "Preschool for All: The program is largely achieving its equity goals, but needs to address risks to expansion",
      "authors": "Multnomah County Auditor",
      "year": 2025,
      "published": "2025-04",
      "kind": "Independent government performance audit",
      "geography": "Multnomah County Preschool for All",
      "claim": "The program reached families with limited preschool access while facing implementation and expansion risks.",
      "establishes": "Auditors found progress reaching priority families and supporting diverse classrooms, with additional support needed. Expansion and communication weaknesses threatened future access.",
      "limits": "Access is a concrete benefit for enrolled families, not proof of a seat for every family, long-term educational gains or better cost-effectiveness than another city's program. Historical tax-rate scheduling in this 2025 report is superseded by current Revenue Division rules.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://multco.us/info/preschool-all-program-largely-achieving-its-equity-goals-needs-address-risks-expansion", "locator": "Report highlights; families from priority groups; risks to expansion"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "pfa-seat-memo-2026",
      "title": "Good Government Hotline investigation identified concerns about the Preschool for All seat allocation process and contracting structure",
      "authors": "Multnomah County Auditor",
      "year": 2026,
      "published": "2026-09-23",
      "kind": "Independent hotline-investigation memorandum, with management response",
      "geography": "Multnomah County Preschool for All",
      "claim": "Paying for empty seats while preferred sites have waitlists creates a documented allocation and financial risk.",
      "establishes": "The auditor cited 1,250 open seats as of August 13, 2026, costing about $2m monthly at that snapshot. Roughly 3,000 waitlist entries could include a child at up to eight sites. The underlying fraud/waste allegation was not substantiated.",
      "limits": "The $24m annualized figure is not observed annual waste; rolling enrollment changes vacancies. Waitlist entries are not unique children. Funding capacity has a stated provider-stability purpose; auditors recommended better allocation and family matching.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://multco.us/file/memorandum_to_board_of_county_commissioners:_good_government_hotline_investigation_identified_concerns_about_the_preschool_for_all_seat_allocation_process_and_contracting_structure/download", "locator": "Memo pp.1–3; management response pp.4–9", "quote": "We did not substantiate the allegation."}]
    }
  ],
  "supplementaryEvidence": [
    {
      "id": "insights-survey",
      "title": "2024 Portland Insights Survey",
      "year": 2025,
      "kind": "Official resident survey conducted with Portland State University",
      "claim": "Residents value some services while expressing concerns about others.",
      "establishes": "More than 4,200 residents participated in June–August 2024. Published findings highlight parks alongside concerns about homelessness, affordability and safety.",
      "limits": "Perceptions are meaningful but are not audited service outcomes or a causal efficiency measure. Compare cities only with matched questions, sampling and weighting. The 2026 survey's results are scheduled for early 2027, so do not label the 2024 results current-year responses.",
      "sources": [
        {"url": "https://www.portland.gov/budget/insights", "locator": "2024 report and 2026 publication schedule"},
        {"url": "https://www.portland.gov/budget/news/2025/4/14/portland-insights-survey-reveals-high-marks-parks-concerns-about-homelessness", "locator": "April 14, 2025 official results release"},
        {"url": "https://www.portland.gov/budget/documents/2024-insights-survey-full-report/download", "locator": "Full report; use its methodology and exact question wording before importing percentages"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "oregon-revenue-data",
      "title": "Oregon Personal Income Tax Statistics, 2026 edition",
      "year": 2026,
      "published": "2026-07-21",
      "kind": "Official state revenue statistics",
      "claim": "Tax-year labels and collection years must be kept distinct.",
      "establishes": "The 2026 edition covers tax year 2024 returns received in calendar 2025. The release forecasts personal income tax to provide about 84% of the 2025–27 state General Fund.",
      "limits": "A forecast is not actual revenue. This is state funding, not the City of Portland's budget. Income, tax liability and filer counts alone cannot isolate migration causes.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/DOR/Posts/Post/DOR-releases-latest-Personal-Income-Tax-Statistics-report", "locator": "July 21, 2026 release; report scope and forecast"}]
    },
    {
      "id": "multnomah-shs-outputs",
      "title": "FY 2025 Supportive Housing Services Annual Report",
      "year": 2025,
      "published": "2025-11-24",
      "kind": "Official program administrative reporting; not an independent causal evaluation",
      "claim": "SHS funded substantial housing and shelter services in Multnomah County.",
      "establishes": "For July 2024–June 2025 the county reports 2,599 people placed in permanent housing, 7,255 people newly housed or sustained in housing, and 2,416 helped by eviction prevention.",
      "limits": "People are not households; placements are not all permanent supportive housing. Do not add overlapping categories. These counts do not identify how many would otherwise have become or remained homeless, or measure net regional homelessness change.",
      "sources": [{"url": "https://hsd.multco.us/2025/11/24/fy-2025-supportive-housing-services-annual-report/", "locator": "Outcomes for FY2025: housing and eviction prevention"}]
    }
  ],
  "comparisonRules": [
    "Display statutory marginal rates, household effective rates and government revenue per resident as different measures.",
    "Show at least low-income, middle-income and high-income household profiles, renters and owners, with and without preschool-aged children. Keep income, filing status and the tax year explicit.",
    "For each profile show housing, childcare and transportation alongside taxes. Treat a public-service benefit as available only when the household is eligible and actually has access.",
    "Show tax and service jurisdictions: Portland city, Multnomah County, Metro, school district and Oregon are different boundaries. A Portland mailing address is not sufficient proof of every jurisdiction.",
    "Treat rent as a household housing cost. Do not add the landlord's full property tax again as if it were a separate renter bill; economic incidence is not identical to legal payment.",
    "Present business types separately: C corporation, pass-through and sole proprietor; distinguish profit taxes, gross-receipts taxes, payroll taxes and licensing fees.",
    "Before comparing service spending, align fiscal years, government coverage, operating versus capital costs, utilities, pensions and debt. Show need or workload alongside cost.",
    "For service cards show spending, access or output, outcome and data-quality notes separately. Avoid one synthetic 'value for taxes' grade unless a defensible weighting and comparability method is supplied.",
    "A scenario removing sales tax creates an accounting gap under fixed spending. It does not prove income tax is the only response: other revenues, intergovernmental aid, service changes or changes in costs are policy choices.",
    "Keep migration scenarios separate from actual collections. Avoid feeding a published elasticity mechanically into a Portland forecast without uncertainty, population match and model validation.",
    "Use explicit evidence labels: current rule, observed trend, survey perception, independent audit, model estimate, quasi-experimental working paper and peer-reviewed study."
  ],
  "recommendedUi": [
    {"panel": "What this costs your household", "purpose": "Dollars and effective rates by income profile, plus housing/childcare/transport costs; tax-only and total-cost views."},
    {"panel": "Does it change where people and businesses go?", "purpose": "Separate observed migration trends from research findings, with study population and uncertainty visible."},
    {"panel": "What are residents getting?", "purpose": "Service-specific measures, independent audit findings and real improvements. Include data-quality limitations beside the figures."},
    {"panel": "Change the funding mix", "purpose": "Fixed-service accounting scenario with explicit replacement choices; show fiscal arithmetic without claiming a causal economic forecast."}
  ]
}