Politics & Government
City Council Still Opposes State Collecting Local Taxes
Council unanimously passed a resolution strongly opposing state's proposal Tuesday.
One for the money, two for the show.
It’s show time at after they unanimously passed a Tuesday strongly opposing the state’s plan to shift the collection of local income taxes to a centralized agency in Columbus.
Mayor Jim Smith said the state has failed to say how much the state will charge for the collection, leaving the city no choice but to pass a second resolution to display their discontent with the proposal.
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“There are so many unanswered questions that we feel we have to…oppose it again to let our state representatives know that you just can’t say ‘Oh, trust me, we’ll take care of it,’” he said. “That’s a bad way of doing business.”
The idea to move collection to the state government was identified by Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor’s Common Sense Initiative, a committee formed to alter policies that may be burdensome to businesses.
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State officials say that, because different municipalities have different methods of collecting income taxes, businesses with outposts in multiple cities and counties struggle to comply with the rules.
But Ward 2 Councilman Dennis McBride isn’t buying that argument.
“With all kinds of publications out there, all kinds of services, it is not tough to find out what a local income tax rate is,” McBride said. “It’s just not tough, and those companies are still going to complain.”
For Mayor Smith, the issue remains how much the state will charge local municipalities for the collection.
Avon currently contracts with the Regional Income Tax Agency, RITA, who takes 2.7 percent in administrative fees from Avon and handles the taxes of about 190 municipalities across the state, including Avon Lake, Sheffield Lake, Sheffield Village and Westlake.
“There’s no guarantee what (the state’s) fee is going to be,” Smith said. “We’ve got more than $10 million, and how much are we going to pay?”
Smith said this proposal, along with 50 percent cuts in state aid to local governments in Gov. John Kasich’s two-year, $112 billion budget and the repeal of the estate tax that largely went to local governments, is making it difficult for cities to comply with the state’s rules.
“I get a big kick out of Columbus saying ‘We balanced our budget,’” he said. “Well, if you quit giving money to the cities and you quit paying your electric bill, your budget will look pretty good too.”