The city’s finance director said if House Bill 601 is approved as written, it could cost the city $600,000 a year in lost income tax revenues.

But Ohio House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Pete Beck said changes to the bill will be coming, and action is not expected this year.

“It needs to be amended and the sponsors know it will be amended,” said the CPA and Republican from Mason. “We are working, all the representatives are wanting to make a bill that’s simple and it’s easy to comply with and it does what we want: uniformity.”

Reps. Cheryl Grossman, R-Grove City, and Mike Henne, R-Clayton, sponsored the bill in an attempt to create uniformity and streamline the state’s income tax code, something many cities, including Middletown, have been requesting to see happen.

But the proposed 129-page bill that its sponsors say will create “simplicity” in the tax code is “a disaster for the city of Middletown” as written, said Finance Director Russ Carolus. City Council voted unanimously to oppose the bill, an act several other cities in the area have done.

“All of us agree that we need tax uniformity,” Carolus said. “This particular bill as it is presented has numerous issues with it that will continue to effect our ability to collect, our ability to manage and our ability to just maintain our own sovereignty in terms of income taxes.”

Though he didn’t say how to City Council Tuesday night, Carolus said this bill would cost the city’s general fund upwards of $600,000 a year. He said the city cannot afford to lose any additional revenue.

“In the most recent year, they took away our estate taxes, they took away our local government funds, they reduced our personal property taxes. We’ve lost almost $3 million worth of annual revenue from the state of Ohio in an effort to balance their budgets,” Carolus said.

The cities of Kettering and Dayton officials last month said it would cost their annual budgets $900,000 and $2.5 million, respectively.

Beck agreed with Carolus that this bill is not revenue neutral, something Henne and Grossman wrote

Beck said he’s spoken with Henne and plans to speak with Grossman. He said there are items that everyone can agree upon, but it’s the “tough issues” that will need further discussion.

Some of those tough issues involve the 12-day and the net operating loss rules.

The 12-day rule allows cities to tax individuals that work in a city for 12 or more days, and the bill proposes moving it to 20 days. The bill also calls for companies to deduct net operating losses for up to five years, but some cities, Beck said, don’t allow the deduction at all.

“We have over 600 different cities treating income taxes differently,” said Beck, who will be the 52nd Ohio House District representative for the western portion of Middletown when the new districts take effect in January.