This bill allows personal income taxpayers to voluntarily report taxpayers’ self-identified race and ethnicity identifiers. Charges the Department of Revenue with creating a schedule to enable taxpayers to use the REAL-D (Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Disability) race and ethnicity identifiers as the list from which a taxpayer may select up to three options. A firewall inside the department will ensure that the data will not be used by auditors or for tax compliance purposes. Taxpayers will be able to check a box that says “Choose not to answer” if they do not want to disclose this information.
What does filing tax statements have to do with ethnicity/race. This will allow access to the way people spend their income in a personal intrusive
way that should not be studied by a committee or the Revenue Department. It will allow reporting, analyzing the answers on the tax form to be used to associate a race or ethnicity with how a few are doing. It’s none of the tax department business how people live their lives.
SB 1 is an invasion of a taxpayers privacy. Oregon Revenue Department already asks far too many questions that citizens shouldn’t answer