Republican Ohio Senate leaders say the two-year state budget plan they released yesterday represents some of the changes they wanted to make to the House version. More changes are coming, with the deadline to sign the budget just over two weeks away. Ohio Public Radio's Karen Kasler reports.
The Senate budget increases the House’s income tax cut from 6.6 percent to 8 percent over two years. President Larry Obhof says with the Senate’s restoration of the small business tax deduction from $100,000 back to $250,000, Ohioans will benefit.
“It ends up at about $340-345 million dollars per year.”
But the budget also includes a 17 percent tax on e-cigarettes and requires big online retailers to collect sales tax.
“Under current Ohio law, those taxes are due anyway.”
Obhof expects up to a thousand amendments to the budget, but says they won’t include anything related to the bill that some call a bailout for Ohio’s two nuclear power plants.
