MDN told you back in April that OH Gov. John Kasich’s insistence that the state budget include a higher severance tax would not happen as part of the 2015 budget (see Celebrate! Ohio Severance Tax Increase Dead in 2015). We also told you about an informal “working group” of OH Senate and House members, called 2020 Tax Policy Study Commission, who are studying the possibility of a new severance tax sooner rather than later (see Ohio Legislators Continue Dalliance with Kasich Severance Tax). That informal group released their formal report last Thursday (full copy below). The members of the group recommend NO TAX AT THIS TIME and further study of the severance tax issue. Specifically, they said with the industry stressed the way it currently is now, you risk killing it if you slap on a high tax. Finally! Some common sense from Republicans in OH. Of course that didn’t sit well with liberal Republican Gov. Kasich who wants to transfer the wealth from one particular group of companies to a different group who haven’t earned it. Kasich sounds more like the commie-lib Bernie Sanders than he does a Reagan Republican, which is what he was elected as back in the day when he joined Congress during the Reagan revolution (we were there, we remember)…
