Pew report: Ohio’s tax revenues still have not recovered from recession

Most states have seen their tax revenue fully recovered from the economic recession a decade ago.

Ohio is among the notable exceptions, research from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows, with tax collections in 2019’s first quarter still 7 percent below Ohio’s peak. Income taxes have been repeatedly slashed in Ohio budgets over the last decade.

Pew tracked the state tax collections during the first quarter of 2019 and compared those figures to each state’s respective peak prior to the recession.

A total of 41 states have fully recovered after accounting for inflation, according to Pew.

“Revenue in these states was still below its recession-era peak for a variety of reasons,” Pew reported, “including state tax cuts, weak economic growth, volatile energy prices, or an unusually high tax revenue peak before the downturn.”

Only Florida has a higher population than Ohio among those nine states. All of Ohio’s surrounding states have fully recovered (in terms of state tax revenues), as have all other Midwest states besides Missouri.

You can read Pew’s full report here.