Ohio’s new budget contains a provision to flatten the income tax to 2.75%. But it doesn’t contain substantial property tax charges after Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed provisions Republican lawmakers said would offer relief.
Backers of a plan to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to abolish property taxes in Ohio fear the combination of those two things might make property taxes go even higher.
DeWine vetoed several property tax changes in the budget, including a 40% cap on tax that school districts could carry over in their operating budgets with the rest refunded to taxpayers. DeWine said he vetoed those property tax cuts because he feared they would harm schools.
“These ideas were thoughtful. But I was also concerned that imposing them now, all of them at once, on our local schools would create a huge, huge problem,” DeWine said.
DeWine said he’d put together a working group to look at ways to reduce property taxes. But Brian Massie, a spokesperson for the Committee to. Abolish Ohio’s Property Taxes, said he doesn’t hold out hope for results from that working group.
“Rhetoric, political rhetoric on the governor’s part,” said Massie.
Massie testified before another working group in the Ohio Legislature that’s worked on property tax solutions. In January, that bipartisan commission released a report with 21 recommendations that lawmakers should consider on property taxes. But none of the recommendations from that panel have been put into law.
Massie said property taxpayers can’t wait—and that Republican lawmakers may have made the problem worse by lowering income taxes because the state will have less revenue for schools.
“If there’s only two main sources of funding – income tax and property tax – and you eliminate the income tax, there’s going to be a heavier emphasis on property taxes,” Massie said.
Massie said lawmakers have refused to deal with the problem since the first Ohio Supreme Court ruling DeRolph v. Ohio ruling in 1997.
“They didn’t solve the problem. What they did is push the problem onto the local property taxes,” Massie said.
Massie said property taxpayers are already struggling and putting more tax burden on them is unfair. That’s why, he said, it’s important to get this amendment before taxpayers next year.
Majority Republicans in the legislature are upset with DeWine’s vetoes and some have talked about the possibility of overriding them. Ohio lawmakers have dozens of proposals under consideration to help property taxpayers. Legislators won’t be back until this fall so it will be difficult for them to pass any meaningful reforms before the January property tax bills arrive in homeowners’ mailboxes.
