Columbus, OH – Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute, issued the following statement on the policies in Senate Bill 352 sponsored by Senator Kristina Roegner (R-27). The legislation would end Ohio’s unconstitutional emergency local income tax structure that proactively deemed all work performed at an employee’s home during Ohio’s stay-at-home order to have been performed in an often higher-taxed office location instead.

“The policies in Senate Bill 352 would end Ohio’s unconstitutional “emergency” exception to its local income tax structure and would also terminate the corresponding Alice-in-Wonderland world where work actually performed at home is absurdly deemed to have been performed in an often higher-taxed office location instead.

“Under both the Ohio and U.S. Constitutions, the Ohio General Assembly lacked the authority to expand local income taxation to nonresidents who were not performing their work within the jurisdiction of the taxing cities. We are pleased that the General Assembly is addressing this error and doing right by Ohio workers in the process. There is no justification under the law for continuing the current unconstitutional emergency-based local income tax system, and that lack of support in the law is precisely why The Buckeye Institute filed a lawsuit that would end the legal fiction created by House Bill 197.”

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