Gov. Kasich's tax plan for Ohio: Tax the poor, reward the wealthy

Ohio's Gov. John Kasich must be trying to earn back his extremist stripes after his decision to accept Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. He helped out Ohio's lower and moderate income folks with that, only to screw them with higher taxes'higher taxes that will pay for a tax break for wealthy.

The proposal would provide a $10,369 annual tax cut on average to taxpayers in the top 1 percent of the income spectrum, who made more than $335,000 in 2012. The bottom fifth of taxpayers, making less than $18,000 a year, would see an average increase of $63. Those in the middle fifth, making between $33,000 and $51,000 in 2012, would come out about even, averaging an annual tax increase of $8.

The plan includes an income tax cut for those at the top, along with extending the sales tax to services that aren't explicitly exempt. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy [ITEP] analyzed the plan for for Policy Matters Ohio, and estimates that the "top 1 percent on average will pay $781 more a year, while middle-income Ohioans will pay $165 and low-income residents, $71." But that $71 for low-income residents is a much larger share of their income.
An earlier analysis from ITEP shows that Ohio's poor and middle class are already paying more of their income in taxes than the wealthy, with the bottom fifth of people paying 11.6 percent of their income and the top 1 percent pays an effective rate of about 8 percent. Kasich wants to make that imbalance even worse.