Sales-tax Credit Would Help Low-income Ohioans

Gov. John Kasich has proposed major changes in Ohio's tax system, including broadening the sales tax to cover most services and cutting the state rate from 5.5 percent to 5 percent. This would produce significant needed revenue and make the sales tax more viable long-term, since more and more of the Ohio economy is based on services. The problem: Low- and moderate income Ohioans would be most affected, as they would pay the most as a share of their income.Key FindingsA state sales-tax credit, styled on one in New Mexico, would benefit hundreds of thousands of Ohioans.A sales-tax credit would provide a targeted way to offset the regressivity of the existing sales tax.Together with a state Earned Income Tax Credit, it could protect nearly two-thirds of the lowest-income Ohioans from the effects of Gov. Kasich's plan to broaden the sales tax

Municipal Income Tax "Fix" is a Flub: Legislators should cut tax avoidance, not invite it

A major rewrite of the state law governing Ohio municipal income tax is being discussed in Columbus. A proposal to overhaul the tax -- House Bill 601 -- was introduced late last year, and the General Assembly will see a revised version afterit convenes this month. A significant effort to overhaul Ohio's municipal income tax should crack down on tax avoidance, guarantee a broad tax base, and ensure that those most able to pay are in fact doing so. In some instances, however, House Bill 601 allows tax avoidance to continue, or even creates new avenues to avoid the tax. When this issue is taken up in the next General Assembly, this should be corrected

The Circulari Project

The Circulari project was a collaboration with Paula Meijerink landscape architect for WANTED and associate professor at the Graduate School of Design Harvard.Within the context of the conference Topologies, Bodies, Sites and Technologies this paper presents the Circulari art project. Circulari could be described as a movement landscape, a video garden or a choreographic field. The paper reveals the different disciplinary facets of 'circulari' which triangulate movement, land art installation and screen technologies to investigate notions of mass movement from a macroscopic to a microscopic scale. With this project inscribing land and cultivating kinaesthetic rhythms is discussed with a historical and contemporary perspective .It focuses on the circulatory and the transformative relationships between landscape and the body. The paper references and makes tangible global shifts within landscapes of production, while simultaneously affecting the personal scale of the body in movement, resulting in site-specificity expressed though reference, materiality and proximity.Society of Dance and History Scholars, Conference Proceedings 2009 Stanford University

Unemployment Compensation in Ohio: Already weak Coverage is Threatened

For years, relatively fewer unemployed Ohioans have qualified for unemployment compensation than their counterparts in other states. Ohio's tough earnings standard and disqualification of jobless workers who would be eligible for benefits elsewhere contribute to this dismal record. For instance, most states allow part-time workers who lose their jobs to seek similar part-time work and qualify for benefits, assuming they have earned enough and meet the other criteria. Ohio does not. Ohio's current requirement that workers average at least $222 a week for at least 20 weeks over a year's time is among the most stringent in the country.1 For instance, it disqualifies those earning this year's minimum wage of$7.70 an hour and working 28 hours a week. A retail employee who has worked for years at such a job would be left without benefits if she or he was laid off

Bank Tax Cuts Loopholes, Reduces Rates: Proposal Also Provides Unneeded Help to Big Banks

Outlines how the Financial Institutions Tax, designed to close loopholes in the corporate franchise tax and lower rates for banks, would affect state revenues. Calls for maintaining rates, addressing the foreclosure crisis, and restoring services

Tax Break for Business Owners Won't Help Ohio Economy

The Kasich administration has proposed a major new income tax break for owners of Ohio businesses. These include a variety of different kinds of businesses -- S Corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships and sole proprietorships -- that have one thing in common: Ohio does not tax the businesses directly on their profits, but rather as the profit passes through to the individual income tax returns of the owners. Hence, they are called "passthrough entities."This new tax break is unlikely to generate new jobs. A recent study by Michael Mazerov of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that state income-tax cuts won't help small businesses create jobs.1 This brief, which should be read together with the Mazerov study, provides Ohio data relevant to the Kasich proposal

Ohio Needs a Strong Income Tax

Provides an overview of state and local taxes and tax credits; their progressiveness; and their benefits, including funding services such as public libraries and police and fire protection and lowering property taxes

The Swapping Constraint

Triviality arguments against the computational theory of mind claim that computational implementation is trivial and thus does not serve as an adequate metaphysical basis for mental states. It is common to take computational implementation to consist in a mapping from physical states to abstract computational states. In this paper, I propose a novel constraint on the kinds of physical states that can implement computational states, which helps to specify what it is for two physical states to non-trivially implement the same computational state