One of Ohio’s unanswered questions from the COVID-19 pandemic is whether people who worked from home should have paid commuter income taxes while their offices sat empty.
State lawmakers gave cities permission to collect those dollars in 2020, but a conservative group called the Buckeye Institute said that violated the state’s constitution. Now, the Ohio Supreme Court will decide who is right.
The case is called Schaad v. Alder, and it’s one of five municipal income tax cases that challenged Ohio’s temporary change to its tax system.
Here’s what happened.
Ohio law lets cities tax commuters because they drive on city roads and presumably use other city services. But downtown offices emptied when the pandemic hit, and cities, which rely heavily on income taxes, worried whether major layoffs were looming.Story from Microsoft
The exact amount cities could have lost was hard to estimate because it’s a refund people have to request, but the Greater Ohio Policy Center estimated Ohio’s six largest cities could lose $306 million annually.
State lawmakers passed a package of legal changes, including one that let cities tax former commuters as if they were still coming to the office.
Groups like the Ohio Mayor’s Alliance said this emergency measure was critical.
