The Observation Deck

Since we are talking about increasing taxes, I thought I would do a comparison with other cities in Cuyahoga county.

Maybe some of you can help do a better job here. Some of the data is old and I didn't put it all together.

I was interested in our overall tax burden in Lakewood.
Income tax rate for 2003:

We certainly aren't the largest and we aren't the smallest. An increase to 2.0 would push us up to one of the largest, but we would have lots of company.

http://cose.org/PDF/FactSheets/Cuyahoga%20County%20Income%20Tax%20Rates.pdf

This is the property tax for Commercial Property in Lakewood. Note the Effective tax is significantly higher for Commercial Property than it is for Residential.

Residential income tax
http://www.cuyahogacounty.us/treasurer/PDF/taxesbydistrict/2005ComIndustRateChart.pdf

Residential Rate Chart:
http://www.cuyahogacounty.us/treasurer/PDF/taxesbydistrict/2005ComparativeRateChart.pdf

The city gets about 25% of their income from property tax as I understand it and every time your home is reassessed, the city's portion goes up as there is no HB920 to stop it, so the city has an automatic COLA built in. Normally Incomes increase and the COLA goes up with income tax as well. (Incomes in Lakewood have not been going up due heavily to the economy.)

We obviously want our total tax burden in Lakewood to be competitive so that we can attract new residents and keep the residents we have.

So....

Would it be better to shift property tax to income tax. e.g., ask for an increase in the income tax, but roll back a portion of the property tax?

We will be being asked to vote for another increase in property tax for the second half of the schools. How will this affect the total tax burden.

We really need to look at the total figures, not just the income tax ones when making this decision.

Here are some references for comparing income tax rates. As the vast majority of communities in Cuyahoga county use either RITA or CCA for collection purposes I only posted them. Complete information about local withholding can obtained from the state of Ohio website (search municipal tax and you will reach a list of all taxing authorities/municipalities within the state).

http://www.rita.to/individual/pdf/2004/TaxTable2005.pdf
http://www.rita.to/business/pdf/2006/20 ... XTABLE.pdf

The first site related the tax rates and the credit rates for all municipalities participating in RITA in the year 2005. The second link shows the tax withholding rates for 2006 (no credit rates available at this time)

http://www.ccatax.ci.cleveland.oh.us/

this lists the rates (tax and credit) for the CCA communities for 2005. If you scroll to the bottom you can find the new rates for 2006 for comparison as well.

Happy Hunting!
~Charyn