Sycamore Taxpayer

Education accounts for a large portion of your state and local tax burden. http://obm.ohio.gov/PageNotFound.aspx?page=budget/operating/executive/0809/bb0809_c.pdf

• Nearly fifty percent of the State-Only General Revenue Fund-Recommended Appropriations for FYs 2008 and 2009 was for Education. Figure C-5.                       

• Your annual Individual Income Taxes and Sales and Use Taxes account for more than eighty percent of the Estimated State-Only GRF Revenues. Figure C-2.                       

The Sycamore School District receives only a very small amount ($3.5 million) of the $7.5 billion dollar annual state appropriation for primary and secondary education. Line 1.035 Five-Year Forecast.

Because of Ohio legislators, a larger disproportionate share of your state taxes that is appropriated for primary and secondary education actually goes to (redistributed to)school districts other than Sycamore!

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Seventh Highest in Nation
 

The state of Ohio has a very high tax burden. According to the Tax Foundation, during the last three decades Ohio’s state and local tax burden has steadily risen from among the nation’s lowest in the 1970s to among the nation’s highest today. Estimated 11.0% of income, Ohio’s state/local tax burden percentage ranks seventh highest in the nation, well above the national average of 10.1%.  
 http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html%20for%20the%20state%20and%20local%20tax%20burden 

Ohio University Professor of Economics Richard Vedder says Ohio has rapidly increased its tax burden in the last generation, while its economic performance has been among the poorest of the American states. These two phenomena are closely related.
 

The Wall Street Journal also puts blame on our state’s condition on Ohio’s tax structure: “Ohio politicians deplore plant closings even as they impose the third highest corporate income tax in the country (10.5%) and the sixth highest personal income tax (8.87%).” 

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Ohio ranked eighth in the nation last year in total state taxes, according to the U. S. Census, collecting nearly $24 billion, behind California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New Jersey.

(Ronald) Alt  cautioned that Census comparisons of state and local tax collections, released last fall, are a better measure of the overall tax burden on residents, Ohio ranked 12^th in the nation in that comparison, which used 2007 Census figures, the most recent available.

Ohio’s package of tax reductions and reforms was enacted in 2005 and phased in the past five years, Levin (Ohio Tax Commissioner) said. It included a 17 percent cut in personal income tax rates and elimination of two major taxes on corporation profits and business property.

Source: Ohio tax not so bad: ranks 33^rd across US by Jon Craig jcraig@enquirer.com April 1, 2010 pB1/2 of The Enquirer.