Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

I wanted to address some of the complaints we have on the fairness side of the 2% income tax issue. Someone posted a number of cities around Central Ohio that imposed a 2% income tax. The fact is there are many more cities in addition to what was posted.

Having a 2% income tax on the people that work in the city is a way of recovering the expenses for providing the jobs. Most businesses must have access to their markets to be successful and that access requires huge investments by the local and existing tax payers to provide that infrastructure. Taxing those businesses is a way of recovering some of that investment. In most cases businesses pay very little of the taxes and if you take a typical department store over 50,000 sq ft as an example. Of the total revenues received from any businesses most of it is what they deduct from the employees pay checks. That income tax accounts for over 90% (at 1% rate) of the revenues coming from business development. Most business have found ways to not pay the local governments any income tax. I disagree that a higher income tax will prevent the city from attracting new commercial development. In most cases higher income tax will have little or no effect on any business.
Big box retail stores do impact the host cities more than any other type of business. With increased shop lifting and traffic it places a strain our local governments.

The state laws that govern taxation seem to not address services and products provided by a municipality and how that municipality can recover the expenses of people coming into their town to buy and use the roads and in some cases break the law.

I would think for our state to be fair it should provide a source of recovery of infrastructure and the state should allow the cities to collect a small amount of sales taxes to help recover the local government?’s cost of doing business. This would not tax the business but it would tax the customers coming into the local restaurants and department stores.

Currently the counties are allowed to impose sales taxes and I doubt that money is shared here locally.

I think this would further the idea of tax those that use the services similar to the water meter attached to my house.

By Ted Hackworth

Tax Savings

How much in taxes could have been saved if the city did not proceed with the Diley Road expansion? Clearly something that was not really needed, at least until 2017 and now one of the reasons that taxes need to be raised [to pay back the debt for its construction].

I guess considering the current state of the city's finances this is one project that we did not need to take on, which now burdens us even more as tax payers. Clearly showing once again that the city and its council did no long range planning and now we the tax payers are being stuck paying the bill.

Let us not forget not only will we have the burden of the construction cost repayment we will now have the added cost of roadway maintenance,landscape maintenance and lighting repairs. How much will this cost?

If I understand correctly the only reason this was done is because the state had funding that they were willing to throw on this unneeded project. Another waste of tax payer dollars.

I know someone will say this will help to stimulate growth and economic development. I doubt if anyone of us will see this in our life time [most of the land that can be used for this purpose is in the township anyway]. I am still waiting for all of that money from the JEDD to come pouring in.

The long and the short is that we are in this situation because no one was really thinking ahead. The individuals that were in control were only looking at short range goals and not the overall impact of what they were doing would have on tomorrow.

To bad that now the people who work in Pickerington will have to pay the price for decisions made by others.

Where you 5 -10 years ago

Why weren't you asking these ?? 5-10 years ago when the planning for the Diley Rd started .... ??

Was not here then

I was not living here then or I would have asked the question. I did once I moved in to the community but no one listened and the rest of the community had their head buried in the sand.