Our office in Clackamas

Where we are

9136 SE St Helens Street, Suite J, Clackamas, OR 97015. Call 503-785-3200 or email info@hts.tax.

Our main office is at 9136 SE St Helens Street, Suite J, just off SE 82nd Avenue and a short drive from the I-205 Sunnyside Road interchange. Parking is on site.

Getting here

From I-205, take the Sunnyside Road exit and head west, then turn on to SE 82nd Avenue. We are a short distance south, on SE St Helens Street. Coming up Highway 224 from Milwaukie, join 82nd at the Clackamas Town Center junction. From Happy Valley, Sunnyside Road brings you down the hill in about ten minutes. There is parking on site, which matters more than it sounds in February — the Town Center car parks nearby fill up and the walk is longer than it looks.

What an appointment involves

Allow about half an hour for an appointment and rather longer if you are bringing a business return. Bring last year’s federal and Oregon returns, whatever documents have arrived so far, and a note of anything that changed during the year — a house, a job, a move across the river, a new business, a child. If you have had a letter from the IRS or the Oregon Department of Revenue, bring the letter itself rather than a description of it; the notice number and the date on it determine what happens next.

Who you will see

Heather works out of this office, as does Pam through filing season, and Katie handles bookkeeping and payroll clients from here. Which of them you deal with depends on what you need rather than on who happened to answer the phone: individual and business returns and anything involving the IRS go to Heather, front-line individual preparation and intake to Pam, and books and payroll to Katie. You will know which of the three has your file.

What is delivered from this office

Everything except the Gorge agricultural work, which is easier to run from The Dalles. Individual and business tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll, tax planning, IRS representation and notary services all operate from Clackamas, including loan signings by arrangement. Clients across the Portland metro, Clark County and SW Washington are served from here, most of them without ever coming in.

If you would rather not come in at all

A large share of our Clackamas-area clients are fully remote, and nothing about the service is reduced by that. Documents come through secure exchange rather than email, appointments happen by phone or video, and returns are e-filed. The office exists for people who would rather sit across a desk, not because the work requires it.

When we are open

During filing season: Monday to Thursday 9am–6pm, Friday 9am–5pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am–4pm. The rest of the year: by appointment — call 503-785-3200 and we will find a time.

Which tax jurisdictions Clackamas is actually in

Clackamas is in Clackamas County. Oregon’s local tax boundaries do not follow city limits or ZIP codes, so this is worth being precise about.

• Inside the Metro district, so Metro SHS applies to income above $128,000 single / $205,000 joint.
• Outside Multnomah County, so Preschool for All does not apply on residency — but it can still apply to income sourced to work performed in the county.
• Not inside the City of Portland, so no Portland Arts Tax and no Portland Business License Tax on residency alone — though a Clackamas business selling into Portland can still owe city tax on apportioned income.
• Inside the TriMet district, so the TriMet self-employment tax reaches self-employed people working here — see transit taxes.

The local economy, and what it means for a tax return

The Sunnyside corridor is retail and healthcare; the industrial area east of 82nd is distribution, fabrication and trades contractors. A large share of our Clackamas client base is owner-operated construction, landscaping and specialty trade businesses with payroll of between two and twenty people, plus the households that work in the medical and retail employers along the corridor.

We work with clients around Clackamas Town Center, the Sunnyside Road medical corridor, the industrial blocks east of SE 82nd and Happy Valley just up the hill.

Who we work with in Clackamas

• Specialty trade contractors from the industrial blocks east of 82nd — electrical, mechanical, sheet metal, landscaping — usually with two to twenty on payroll
• Medical and dental practices along the Sunnyside corridor, where the owner is also the practitioner
• Retail and service businesses around the Town Center, several of them family-run for more than a decade
• Households commuting into Portland, Milwaukie and Gresham, most of them over the Metro SHS threshold and unaware of it in their first year here
• Landlords with older rental stock in unincorporated Clackamas County, where depreciation has usually been understated

What we do most of in Clackamas

Tax situations we see in Clackamas

Unincorporated, and what that changes

Clackamas is a census-designated place rather than an incorporated city, which is why the tax position here surprises people who assume a familiar address means a familiar set of taxes. There is no city of Clackamas levying a business license tax. What does apply is the Metro district, because the urbanised part of the county sits inside it, and Clackamas County itself. The absence of a city layer makes this a materially cheaper place to run a small business than an equivalent address a few miles north in Portland.

Businesses here, customers there

The most common compliance gap we find in Clackamas businesses is a Portland one. A contractor based on this side of the county line who does most of their work in the city has income sourced to Portland and Multnomah County, and both levy business taxes on that apportioned share. Registration is generally required whether or not tax is owed. Nobody sends you a letter about it until the year they do.

Questions we get from Clackamas