Latest IRS Data Shows Ohio Continues to Bleed Residents and Their Incomes

Over 12 years, due to net out-migration, Ohio lost $2.16 billion in tax revenue at BOTH the state and local level. It also lost the best and brightest doers to places like Florida, Tennessee & Texas.

I’ll talk more about this stunning table in a few weeks when the latest jobs data is released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will include revisions going back several years. Those revisions likely will be downward adjustments to job growth in Ohio. That later discussion will focus on just how grossly ineffective JobsOhio and Republican control has been for Ohioans and their businesses. Neither the dip-shit leaders at JobsOhio nor feckless Ohio Republicans—from John Kasich to Mike DeWine, from Jon Husted to Matt Huffman, and from Keith Faber to Rob McColley—can argue in the face of this data that they have succeeded in their jobs.

At the end of the day, more Ohioans with lots of income fled Ohio for greener pastures than non-Ohioans with lesser incomes who moved here. That happened because Ohio is NOT viewed as a place in which you can thrive. As a result, state and local government each lost over $2.16 billion in tax revenue (assuming an average of 2% at the state level and 2% at the local level). Had policymakers enacted the reforms I have articulated and advocated for since September 2009, this outcome would not have happened, as Ohio would have been a right-to-work state with no state income tax, lower government dependency, constrained property taxes, and a world-class airport that would have spurred a tremendous economic boom.

I truly am sorry for Ohio that Republican voters keep electing incrementalist, nibble-on-the-margin leaders. We deserved better.