Oregon taxpayers are on track to get a “kicker” tax rebate worth a combined $570.5 million next year, state economists told lawmakers in the latest quarterly forecast on Wednesday.
That is the upshot of aggregate incomes in the state exceeding economists’ expectations well before the pandemic, as lawmakers assembled the current state budget.
State economist Mark McMullen told lawmakers “this massive helicopter drop of a massive amount of federal aid” played a key role in raising incomes, through stimulus payments to individuals and enhanced unemployment benefits. Absent that federal aid, Oregonians’ aggregate income would essentially be flat, said state economist Josh Lehner.
“We haven’t seen this in decades, this level of income support coming from the federal government,” Lehner said.