> What if major corporations say no and leave the state?

Which major corporations would you predict are likely to forbid product “sales” in Oregon if this passes?

> Initiative Petition 17 would establish a 3% tax on corporations’ sales in Oregon above $25 million

What stops them from just charging 3% more? Kinda sounds like an awkward sales tax?

It is a sales tax, they're just pretending that it will be paid by the seller--as though corps will just take a 3% hit on profit margin! The only differences I can see are A) the tax will be obfuscated (i.e. baked into the sales price, or shifted from low-margin to high-margin items), rather than neatly listed as a line item on the receipt, and B) businesses with revenue under 25M are exempt.

Sales taxes are typically a geographic boundary and a product inclusion/exclusion list. The addition of “seller’s annual revenue” may not fit within existing legal definitions (I haven’t checked), and I expect that naming it a “corporate tax” serves various marketing purposes (both for the headline’s author, and for the proposal’s authors).

You'd just abandon whole state of your paying consumers? Kick yourself of the market voluntarily?

Of course if you pay in tax more than you earn than sure but if not?

You only need a subsidiary in Oregon. So all major components get moved outside the state, including higher wage jobs, and leave bare minimum distribution in Oregon. Which undoubtedly contracts with another out of state subsidiary for "marketing" to ensure profits are below the 25m threshold.

The tax should be on sales I think. You can't move out the customers.

A market full of people with an extra $750 to spend!