COLUMBUS, Ohio — A bipartisan group of Ohio’s mayors is raising concerns about a provision in the state’s budget that could keep cities from collecting municipal income taxes this year and last year due to remote working.
What You Need To Know
- Three Ohio mayors met to discuss a taxation bill introduced in the Ohio Statehouse
- The bill would let those who worked from home in the pandemic to pay taxes in their resident city not the business’ location
- The bill has passed the Ohio House
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, Findlay Mayor Christina Muryn and Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown came together Thursday, on behalf of the Ohio Mayors Alliance, to discuss the recovery of the local economy and how vital they said it is to jumpstart the nation’s economy.
“There cannot be a recovery in Ohio and in America unless our cities are leading the way and that’s what we’re committed to doing,” said Ginther.
However, the state’s mayors feel the state legislature is going against that message.
The General Assembly is in the process of trying to allow Ohioans who worked from home during the pandemic to file a municipal tax refund from the city where their office is located for every day they were home. Then, they would pay taxes in the city where they live.
The Ohio House of Representatives passed a bill last week saying Ohioans could do this for every day in 2021.
Yet, the Ohio Senate is attempting to widen the window to go back to last year.
“You get in the car. You put it in drive to move forward to lead our state’s economy in this recovery back. We can’t put the car in drive and reverse at the same time,” Ginther said.
Mayors Muryn and Brown said their cities are still waiting on millions in federal coronavirus relief for local businesses and future investment.
However, they said the refunds would put a pause on those actions.
“One thing I truly believe is that the best people to make the decisions for our local community on how we can recover is by leaving it up to the local community because we’re each a little bit different,” said Muryn.
Brown agreed the move would threaten local progress.
“Retroactive changes to our municipal taxation and authority will threaten and destabilize the planning that we’ve been able to create (and) some of the forward progress that we’ve been able to make,” said Brown.
Delaware County Republican Kris Jordan, a joint sponsor of the House bill, said,
“Employees have been taxed by municipalities they have neither lived in, nor performed any work in for over a year,” Jordan said. “This is simply not fair to the Ohio taxpayers we represent.”
Meanwhile, the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) estimated a 30% shift to working-from-home that would cause nearly 85% of the communities it serves to lose revenue.
