Ohio House votes out $88B state budget bill containing numerous workforce priorities

OSCPA staff report 

The Ohio House on Wednesday passed House Bill 33, Ohio’s massive biennial budget legislation for fiscal years 2024-2025, by a wide margin, officially sending the bill to the Senate where hearings have already begun.  

Included in the bill are several OSCPA tax priorities such as conforming state to federal law on bonus depreciation (See separate article), as well as a number of provisions targeting improving Ohio’s workforce priorities. 

A top priority of the House was to keep chipping away at Ohio’s personal income tax rates and brackets in the budget bill. While their goal of a flat tax rate was not achieved, House leaders did eliminate another tax bracket, cutting costs for low- and middle-class Ohioans. In the bill’s current form, the revised budget bill would raise the level at which Ohioans would not pay any income tax up to their first $26,050 of income – up from $25,000 in current law. It also would eliminate a middle-class tax bracket, with the result that lower- and middle-income Ohioans those making up to $92,150 per year would pay the same reduced income tax rate – 2.75%. The House didn’t change the top two rates. 

We recognize that Ohio CPAs work in essentially every industry in Ohio. To assist you in finding the latest status of provisions specifically impacting your areas of concern, check out this comprehensive summary of House changes. On a broader scale, the bill continues to address in some form issues impacting all Ohioans including school funding reform, affordable housing to address current shortages, child care issues for lower-income workers, and other workforce-related challenge such as economic development site preparation. 

Numerous Senate hearings will take place in the next few weeks on this 4,600-page bill chock full of funding and public policy issues.  Per the Ohio Constitution, the final budget bill must be signed into law by Gov. DeWine before July 1.