School districts that have relied on a tax on equipment purchased by local businesses want the Ohio Senate to add more money to its school funding plan to compensate for their expected losses. School officials say, without more state funds, local taxpayers will see tax hikes.
When a tax reform package passed a decade ago, schools that relied on what’s known as the tangible personal property tax, or TPP, were given offsets by the state to allow for the phase out of those taxes.
But leaders of some schools that depend on the TPP say the proposed total phase out of that tax in the Senate budget hurts them. And Steve Moore of the Princeton School District near Cincinnati says the tax cuts for Ohioans and small businesses in this plan won’t offset the loss of the TPP.
“For us it will be a tax increase. That simply,” Moore says.
Moore and other school leaders are telling lawmakers there needs to be a permanent solution to help schools like theirs that have been hurt by tax reforms over the past decade. Otherwise, they say they cannot afford to provide the education they now provide without a major tax increase on local taxpayers.