Ohio Republicans introduce bills to deal with property taxes 

Ohio Republicans continued their quest to find solutions to property taxes by introducing or considering introducing bills.

State Rep. David Thomas, R-Jefferson, a joint sponsor of House Bill 355, said that the bill would raise the voter approval threshold for school and local service property tax levies from a simple majority to 60%, the Statehouse News Bureau reported.

“I think there needs to be some type of understanding that when you’re increasing taxes on the whole community, the whole community should really have buy-in,” Thomas said.

The politician said that he’s concerned that property tax levies can pass in low-turnout elections. He suggested that overall turnout should be higher for levies to be approved, considering that most Ohioans don’t like property taxes.

“I think that there should be some type of recognition that more community support for higher taxes is a better way to actually increase that process,” Thomas said. “There are communities, though, that will never be able to get property taxes passed because they won’t see that kind of turnout potentially, and that’s very possible.”

State Rep. Ron Ferguson, R-Wintersville, also recently suggested that property taxes should be abolished and replaced with sales taxes, according to the Staehouse News Bureau.

Ferguson said the replacement is important because, although property taxes are too burdensome for Ohioans, they often fund the safety forces Ohio communities need, such as fire, police and EMS services.

The politician added that he is working on a bill that would replace lost property tax revenue for first responders.

“It takes the current sales tax that the state of Ohio collects, which is 5.75% and it peels away 20% of the state’s share and creates its own funds that would help the locals and the first responders,” he said.

Ferguson said some cities have income taxes that cover their safety forces, so this bill would serve as a contingency plan for areas that don’t have that type of revenue.

“This is a separate fund because this fund would only be for places that receive property taxes, and so, of course, not all government entities actually receive property taxes,” he said. “So there’s a big difference in your townships and your villages versus, say, your cities, which typically are people that rely on income taxes.”

The recent news came after Ohio.News previously reported that Ohioans in the northeastern part of the state generally opposed school levies that would have raised homeowners’ taxes, leading to their failure on Nov. 4.

Out of the 38 school ballot issues, 23 passed and 15 failed. The renewal levies that were not intended to raise taxes passed 18 out of 20 times, while those designed to raise taxes failed 7 out of 10 times.

The primary reason most Ohioans opposed the levies was that they believed the taxes, especially property taxes, were already too high. Some people even suggested abolishing property taxes altogether.