Step on the gas and wipe that tear away

The O has a story behind the Paywall of Pity today about how taxpayers and their income are running out of Multnomah County in droves. If you're like me, you're not paying to see what the O is offering these days, but the article is based on public data from the IRS, which has an army of statisticians keeping track of county-to-county migration patterns, based on tax returns filed. I've looked at some of the government tables on which the O article is based, and here's what I see from my amateur perch.

For the tax year 2021, the number of individual tax returns filed from zip codes in Multnomah County fell by 5,591. Of the returns filed from Multnomah the previous year, 316,329 stayed in the county, but 35,364 were filed from somewhere else. Meanwhile, 29,773 returns that were filed from somewhere else the year before were filed in Multnomah. The 5,591 net decrease in returns (35,364 out minus 29,773 in) represents about a 1.61 percent drop from the previous year.

But the taxpayers who left had a lot of income. Get this: The adjusted gross income on tax returns filed in Multnomah County for 2021 was $1,080,279,000 less than for 2020. If I've got my numbers straight, that's a decrease of about 3.82 percent in a single year. But for sure, it's more than a billion bucks! The details are: $2,021,084,000 migrating in, and $3,101,163,000 migrating out. (Meanwhile, the people who stayed from the previous year showed adjusted gross income totaling about $28.2 billion.)

Statewide, Oregon isn't doing so great, but it's nowhere near in the trouble Multnomah County's in. The state had out-migration of $5,195,965,000 and in-migration of $5,029,643,000, for a net loss of $122.3 million, or by my numbers a decline of less than a tenth of a percent. If you take Multnomah County out of the equation, Oregon as a whole is doing fine.

Things are really swinging in Clackistan, though. Clackamas County had out-migration of $1,230,005,000 and in-migration of $1,549,928,000. That's an increase in income of approximately $319.9 million, or by calculations about 1.95 percent.

Over in Washington County, not so good. The out-migration was $1,965,227,000 and the in-migration was only $1,502,807,000. That's a loss of $453.4 million, or I think about 2.08 percent from the year before.

The numbers speak for themselves, but I guess there are a couple of other points worth making. The zip codes that control this study are about a year old. The returns from which they were taken were filed in the spring, summer, and fall of 2022, as the taxpayers were reporting income from 2021. I would think that when the IRS releases its annual report next year on returns being filed now, in 2023, Multnomah County's numbers will not be improving.

And remember, while these income figures are depressing, Portland City Hall's balance sheet is even worse. We are in the fourth-worst shape of the top 75 cities in the country when it comes to comparing assets to liabilities. There is no pot of cash to cushion the fall.

So when you list Portland's woes, leave some room for financial collapse. The future is not looking bright in that department.