Zach Schiller to the Senate Finance Committee on House Bill 492: Close the loophole on the InvestOhio personal income tax credit.
Repealing the Ohio income tax would blow an enormous hole in the state budget. It would have to be paid for with gigantic budget cuts or major increases in other taxes.
Online registration would be a barrier to UC benefits for many Ohioans with limited computer literacy and access. Other states that have imposed similar requirements have seen large numbers of claimants denied benefits because they could not navigate the system.
Gov. John Kasich’s new tax proposal would deliver annual tax cuts averaging more than $2,800 to the top 1 percent of Ohio taxpayers while those in the bottom two-fifths would pay more on average than they do now.
Gov. Kasich’s proposal contains helpful initiatives, but Ohio does not need the across-the-board income-tax cut that is the centerpiece of his mid-biennium budget proposal.
After the General Assembly raised the top income-tax rate to 7.5 percent in 1992 the state generated more than 100,000 jobs in each of the following three years. Compare that with the 25,600 jobs Ohio gained during 2013, the 40,300 in 2012, and the 77,600 in 2011. Tax levels are
An across-the-board cut in rates favored by Gov. Kasich may allow low-income Ohioans to buy a slice of pizza a year, on average. Those in the middle could purchase a cheap pizza maker, while the state’s most affluent taxpayers could use their cut to go on a round-trip for two
Congress should act now to restore federal benefits, which have not previously been withdrawn when the national unemployment rate was this high. This will not only aid the families of unemployed Ohioans, but the economy as well.
The state budget approved in June limits eligibility for Ohio’s homestead exemption, but doesn’t do enough to focus the property-tax break on seniors who need it most.
Cuyahoga County’s two largest private nonprofit hospital systems together would owe tens of millions of dollars a year in additional property tax if their exempt properties in Cleveland were subject to taxation. Nine years ago, Policy Matters Ohio analyzed the size of the property holdings of Cuyahoga County’s two major
A tax-expenditure review mechanism is badly needed. While there certainly are ways that this bill could be strengthened, we urge the committee to approve it as a first step toward providing the accountability for tax expenditures that Ohio needs.
Senate bill 210 would take the savings from Medicaid expansion and use it for an across-the-board income-tax cut that might buy a cup of coffee for low-income Ohioans but would give the average top earner enough for a trip to Paris.
