Ohio families are already struggling, and one gubernatorial candidate’s tax plan would make things even worse.
As we lay out in a new policy report from our organization, Innovation Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy’s tax plan would be devastating for Ohio communities.
It would cut schools, health care, and other essential programs while giving a huge tax break to the wealthy. And just to make matters worse, it would likely lead to big tax increases for most Ohioans.
At the core of this dangerous proposal is Ramswamy’s promise to eliminate the income tax without hurting schools or other core services. It’s a big promise, and it’s a false one because it’s just not possible.
Ramaswamy’s plan would leave a $9.8 billion hole in the Ohio budget. You can’t just make that kind of reduction without dramatic cuts elsewhere.
Public schools would be the first and hardest hit.
A proportional cut would come in at more than $2.4 billion being taken away from Ohio’s kids, a tenth of school funding in the state.
Communities would be faced with an awful choice: make cuts to their kids’ education or dramatically raise property taxes.
What would those cuts look like? Bigger classroom sizes. Buildings shuttered. Fewer teachers. Fewer services for kids with disabilities.
Health care would also get slashed.
Medicaid covers about 3 million Ohioans, including children, seniors, pregnant women, and people with disabilities.
Ramaswamy’s tax scheme would put them at risk of losing their health coverage.
And because of the funding formula with the federal government, the losses would only multiply, sending nearly two dollars back to Washington D.C. for every state dollar cut, leading to further coverage cuts.
The cuts just continue from there.
Ohio colleges and universities? Gutted. Local police and fire departments? Defunded. And vital programs like child welfare, mental health, disability and senior services would also face deep reductions.
But it isn’t just cuts: most of us will actually see our taxes go up.
The average worker may see about $100 a month in reduced income taxes under Ramaswamy’s plan. But they’ll get absolutely hammered with other taxes going up.
To make up for all these cuts, property taxes or sales taxes would have to skyrocket, ensuring that the burden will be carried by working and middle class Ohioans.
The bottom line is that under Ramaswamy’s plan, your taxes will go up.
One group of Ohioans will do great under this plan: the super wealthy like Vivek Ramaswamy. They will see another huge tax break while the rest of us struggle with huge cuts to essential programs and services.
To be clear, this isn’t a new idea that Ramaswamy is pushing.
Kansas tried this in 2012 and it was a spectacular failure. The state saw slower population growth, cuts to schools and highways, higher sales taxes, credit rating downgrades. Things got so bad (and so unpopular) that the conservative state legislature actually undid the tax cuts a few years later.
Vivek Ramswamy’s plan is simple and Ohioans deserve to understand it: he’ll cut taxes for wealthy people like him, while gutting schools, cutting health care, and raising taxes on the rest of us.
Ohio families keep getting forced to get by on less and less while the rich get another tax handout.
Michael McGovern is the President of Innovation Ohio. Terra Goodnight is the Research Director at Innovation Ohio.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.
