Fund Our Future By Making the Wealthy & Corporations Pay What They Owe

From Cleveland to Clermont County, Ohioans are good neighbors. Many of us pitch in by digging each other out of the snow or by volunteering at our local food pantry. Others go to work every day to make our communities better as teachers, nurses, or bus drivers. 

Through each of our contributions, we built Ohio’s world-class library systems, our beautiful state parks, and our top-notch public universities.

 
FUND
 

Paying taxes is how we come together across race and place to build a strong foundation for our communities — it’s how we do big things, together.

 

But instead of using our shared resources to help us pull together, certain Ohio politicians are pitting us against each other based on our race or background hoping we’ll blame everyday people for the hardships politicians create. They’re rigging the rules to redirect resources from our communities to their country clubs, from our classrooms to their ballrooms, and from our public parks to their private jets. 

They’ve peddled lies about wealth “trickling down” while turning Ohio’s tax code upside down — so the same people who are paid the lowest wages also pay the highest share of their incomes in taxes.

When we fund our future, we can bring prosperity to businesses on Main Street, not just the wealthy corporations of Wall Street.

We can have clean, green and dependable public transit to get to work. We can all get the health care we need to get and stay well. And every child will be prepared for the future at an excellent public school.

Let’s join together and call on our lawmakers to rewrite the rules so the rich and wealthy corporations give as much as they take. 

 
 

Here are our policy solutions:

 

  • Rebalancing the income tax. People who do well in Ohio should do right by Ohio. But Ohio’s tax code is upside down with the wealthiest people paying a smaller share of their incomes in taxes than the people with the lowest incomes. Lawmakers can embrace Republican Gov. George Voinovich’s policy of higher income taxes on wealthy Ohioans who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That will generate resources so communities can build safe housing, care for the sick, and keep our air and water clean.

  • Supporting working people who are struggling to make ends meet: Ohio’s lawmakers can put more money in the hands of people who are struggling to make ends meet by making the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable.

  • Cleaning up the tax code by rolling back special interest tax breaks: Each year, Ohio lawmakers choose to direct over $9 billion of our public resources to tax breaks, including the LLC loophole which has been exploited by the wealthiest businesses, costing our state $1 billion a year. Instead, policymakers should end breaks that don't provide real benefits to everyday Ohioans and direct those resources to build more vibrant communities for us all, no exceptions.

  • Making corporations pay what they owe: Corporations depend on our collective public resources to operate, but Ohio is just one of six states without a corporate income tax. In 2005, some policymakers put corporate profits ahead of people’s needs by scrapping the corporate income tax. Bringing it back could leverage hundreds of millions of dollars that can be used to fund excellent public schools, improve bus service, and build out our clean energy infrastructure.

  • Improving transparency of Ohio’s tax breaks: Reinstate the committee to examine the effectiveness of the public dollars Ohio lawmakers dedicate for special interest tax breaks.