PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter registers as "True" on the Yost campaign's claim that "Little Orphan" David Pepper-Warbucks is a tax-raiser.
PolitiFact Ohio asked Yost’s campaign to back up the claim. It pointed to legislation Pepper sponsored as a city councilman in 2002 that called on Cincinnati to begin collecting income taxes from visiting professional athletes and entertainers. The motion passed and Cincinnati began collecting the tax.
Pepper, now a county commissioner in Cincinnati’s Hamilton County, denies responsibility for imposing the tax. Pepper instead blamed state lawmakers who included the jock tax in a comprehensive municipal tax bill passed in 2000. Pepper said that bill, HB 483, forced cities to tax those athletes’ earnings.
We took a closer look at HB 483 and found a provision that prohibits cities from taxing the income of anyone who works in a city for 12 or fewer days in a calendar year. An exception to that rule, however, is "a professional entertainer or professional athlete … as may be reasonably defined by the municipal corporation," the bill reads. That means an Ohio city can tax a professional athlete’s pay, no matter how many days he works there. (The provision originally was part of another bill that passed in 2000, HB 477, but was thrown into HB 483 for technical reasons.)
While Pepper argued state law requires Cincinnati to collect the jock tax, experts we talked to said the 2000 state law placed Cincinnati under no obligation to do so.
What makes this double-plus fun is that Pepper has been blaming everybody ELSE for HIS vote. Once again, an Ohio Democrat is not taking responsibility for his actions...I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find gambling in this establishment.
