Bright line residency, PEO SBD/BID audits top list of legislative priorities

By Gary Hunt, senior content editor

It has been a good year in Ohio for CPAs, as some long-sought reforms – such as centralized collection of municipal net profits taxes and elimination of the municipal throwback rule – have come to pass and will go into effect in 2018.

But there is still work to do to improve Ohio’s business climate. After speaking with members, OSCPA’s government relations team released your updated list of top legislative priorities.

The list includes several issues we’ve discussed before, such as the need for a bright line residency statute and addressing Ohio’s ill-advised marriage tax penalty.

Other topics covered are:

• Ohio Department of Taxation audits of PEOs on SBD/BID
• Sales tax on services expansion
• Pass-through entity reform

Some of the items are outstanding issues from the Ohio Tax Reform Task Force white paper of 2016, while others came about more recently, said Barb Benton, CAE OSCPA’s vice president of government relations.

“All of these issues started with OSCPA members in some way – be it through involvement in one of our committees or by contacting us individually,” Benton said. “These priorities reflect OSCPA’s longstanding goal of supporting simplicity, fairness and consistency in state and local tax policy. While some will be very difficult to achieve because of the impact on state coffers, others – particularly the PEO issue – might see movement this fall.”

You can read complete summaries of all these issues here, and of course we will discuss them further in the weeks ahead.