Most Portland paychecks pay no local income tax at all
It is worth saying plainly, because the opposite is widely assumed: on a $60,000 or $90,000 salary, Multnomah County and Metro take nothing. Both taxes are levied only on Oregon taxable income above roughly $125,000 for a single filer, and neither is a tax on your first dollar. What you lose to Oregon on an ordinary salary is the state's own 4.75% to 9.9% ladder, plus Paid Leave Oregon and the statewide transit tax - all of which this page already applies whether or not you tick the Portland box.
Two taxes, stacked, with thresholds three thousand dollars apart
Above the line there are two, and they are separate levies from separate governments. Preschool for All is Multnomah County's: 1.5% over $125,000 single or $200,000 joint, rising to 3% over $250,000 or $400,000. Supportive Housing Services is Metro's: 1% over $128,000 or $205,000. The gap matters more than it looks. Metro's thresholds are indexed for the first time in 2026, moving from $125,000 and $200,000, while the county's did not move - so there is now a narrow band, between $125,000 and $128,000 for a single filer, where the county taxes you and Metro does not. Any 2026 figure that puts both at $125,000 is quoting last year.
The transit tax on your employer is not on your stub
The TriMet payroll tax, 0.8237% in 2026, is the one most often shown by mistake in a Portland take-home estimate. Oregon's Department of Revenue is unambiguous: “The transit tax is imposed directly on the employer.” It cannot be deducted from your wages, so it is not on this page. Do not confuse it with the statewide transit tax of 0.1%, which is genuinely yours and is included above.
Two things this page cannot decide for you
The first is your address. Metro's district does not cover all of Portland, and it reaches into Clackamas and Washington counties; Preschool for All follows the Multnomah County line instead. There is no list of ZIP codes that gets this right - Metro publishes an address lookup precisely because the boundary does not follow anything simpler. Ticking the Portland box here assumes you are inside both.
The second is Portland's arts tax, a flat annual charge billed separately and never withheld from pay, which is why it is absent from the figures above. Its 2026 amount is currently in an odd state we would rather flag than paper over: the city ordinance amending the tax code sets it at $50 for tax years 2026 onward, with an income floor of $20,000 single and $40,000 joint, while the Revenue Division's public page still describes the older $35 charge. Until the administering office publishes 2026 guidance, we are not putting a number on it.