Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly is researching ways to raise an additional $50 million for city programs, and doing so would require raising taxes, city documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive show.

To that end, the city’s top revenue official provided Eudaly with an analysis of seven possible tax increases, including a personal income tax on Portland’s top earners, a soda tax and higher property taxes.

Some options, if implemented, could collect tens of millions of dollars each year. The documents call Eudaly’s $50 million ask the “revenue target.”

Eudaly’s chief of staff, Marshall Runkel, said Friday the commissioner is in no way committed to enacting any of the tax increases outlined in the report by Revenue Division Director Thomas Lannom. Runkel stressed the analysis was done as part of an information gathering effort directed by Eudaly and has not resulted in policy proposals.

Asked what Eudaly may want to direct additional funds to, Runkel said, “Anyone who looks around the city can figure out we need additional resources for homelessness.”

The option that would raise the most revenue is a tax on prepared foods and beverages, similar to a tax in use in Ashland since 1990. Such a tax could raise $77 million a year in Portland, and a tax of $0.015 per ounce on just sugary sodas could rake in $19 million.

An upside to those taxes from the point of view of taxpayers is that they can be “avoided by choice,” the report says. It also states a food and beverage tax may disproportionately affect low-income people or face “very high opposition given food culture in Portland.”

A personal income tax of 1 to 2 percent on the richest 5 percent of Portlanders – about 21,000 people – could raise as much as $75 million a year, according to Lannom’s report. Such a tax “directly addresses equity and income inequality,” he wrote, but could affect whether additional people and companies move to Portland. Those already here are “unlikely to move,” the report states.

A property tax levy of $1 per $1,000 of assessed value could raise $55 million and would be easy for the city to collect, the report says. Voters may have “property tax fatigue,” however, and some could perceive a new levy as making Oregon’s unique property tax system more unfair.

Several other options would raise much less money: an increase to a tax on CEO compensation ($2.5 million), a targeted business tax ($2.7 million) and an 0.25 percent increase in Portland’s clean energy tax ($17 million).

Eudaly’s office has also explored an “empty dwelling fee” to incentivize landlords to keep their units full in Portland’s stressed housing market. Under that tax, landlords would be charged $5,000 per empty unit for every 120 days of vacancy, with exceptions for vacancies caused by renovations, sale of the units, the death of the owner and for low-income property owners.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com