March 2, 2015

Toledo Blade: Instead of Another Tax Cut, Ohio Should Focus on Tax Fairness

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Here are some facts and figures about Ohio’s lopsided income distribution and tax burdens, gleaned from Mr. Herzenberg’s study and separate new reports by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Economic Policy Institute:

You’re part of Ohio’s 1 percent if you make more than $356,000 a year. The average annual income in this rarefied group is close to $1 million.

From 2009 through 2012, as Ohio was recovering from the Great Recession, that 1 percent captured fully 72 percent of the state’s income growth, the Economic Policy Institute report calculates. The other 99 percent of us shared what was left over. And the disparity is growing: Ohio’s top 1 percent now takes home 17.5 percent of all income in the state.

In 1979, the comparable share was barely half that much. You have to go back to 1928, the year before the Depression began, to find a more unbalanced distribution of wealth in Ohio than we have today, the Economic Policy Institute report suggests.

Yet our 1 percent pay just 5.5 percent of their family income in state and local taxes — including income, sales, property, and excise taxes.


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