SALEM – Oregon legislators may get yet another recommendation to slash the “kicker” tax rebates so beloved of the state’s taxpayers.

Individual and business taxpayers would get smaller rebates in good times, but the state’s general reserve fund would get bigger to cope with bad times under the proposal from a legislative task force.

The proposal may go to the Legislature in 2009, and part of it may go to voters for approval. The task force reviewed the proposals Thursday.

As the “kicker” stands now, voters get a tax refund if actual collections of income taxes exceed projections in the state budget by more than 2 percent.

Under the proposal, the projections would become forecast ranges, based on history, rather than specific targets.

Amounts of collected taxes exceeding the top limits of the ranges still would go back to taxpayers.

Amounts that are below the limits but more than what is needed for the state budget approved by the Legislature would go into a general reserve created last year.

The money that would go into the reserve fund would be capped at 10 percent of general-fund spending in the previous two years.

For individual taxpayers in 2007, the rebates amounted to a record $1.1 billion.

If the proposal had been in effect, the “kicker” to individual taxpayers in 2007 would have been about $240 million and the rest would have filled the reserve.

The proposal’s complexity worried Democratic Sen. Rod Monroe of Portland. He said opponents would argue that it effectively does away with the 30-year-old kicker.

“I really think it will be a difficult sell,” said Monroe.

Voters in 2000 made the “kicker” part of the Oregon Constitution, and only they can change it. The constitution, however, doesn’t specify the forecasting method.