After a long battle and many years of unfair rates to small business owners, the BWC has to pay $420 million to small businesses all across Ohio. The ruling came last Thursday and agreed with a ruling from 2013 that states that the BWC must refund millions of dollars to small businesses owners. Now that settlement has been reached many small businesses should be getting refunds ranging from a few pennies to millions of dollars according to some reports.
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Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation reaches $420M settlement agreement over rigged premiums
The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has reached an agreement to pay $420 million to settle a years-long legal battle over allegations it overcharged business owners for workers’ compensation premiums.
The agency would create a fund to repay the more than 250,000 businesses that were overcharged between 2001 and 2008, according to the settlement disclosed Wednesday.
In a class-action lawsuit filed in 2007, thousands of mostly small-business owners accused the bureau of rigging the system to benefit participants of a special group-rating plan. They asked for $1.3 billion in damages then.
The Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals in a scathing decision in May called the system “a cabal of Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation bureaucrats and lobbyists for group sponsors who rigged workers’ compensation insurance premium rates so that for employers who participated in the BWC’s group rating plan … it was ‘heads you win,’ and for employers who did not participate in the group rating plan … it was ‘tails you lose.’ ”
Columbus Small Businesses Endorse Same Sex Marriage
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Over 250 small businesses in Columbus endorsed same sex marriage on Monday, many saying it would boost business.
“When legislators talk about jobs, jobs, jobs they need to think about this,” said Mark Dempsey, owner of Dempsey’s restaurant. “When you go to get married there’s a celebration involved. There’s the wedding reception, the wedding itself, there’s flowers, there’s cakes, there’s wedding rings.”
Dempsey’s downtown restaurant is no stranger to politics. On the walls you can find pictures of everyone from Warren G Harding… to Tip O’Neill and the Gipper… to honest Abe.
Dempsey was joined by other Columbus small business owners today to endorse marriage equality in Ohio.
Kasich approved increase in Ohio’s small business income deduction
Ohio Governor John Kasich recently signed a bill that, among other things, increases the small business income deduction from 50% to 75% of the first $250,000 in net business income.
In an effort to grow Ohio’s economy, last year the Ohio budget bill included significant tax law changes to deliver a $2.7 billion tax cut to individuals and businesses, over the course of three years. The changes included:
• A small business tax cut that enables owners/investors to deduct from taxable income 50% of the first $250,000 in net business income.
• A 10% personal income tax cut to be phased in over three years. In 2013, Ohio tax rates were reduced by 8.5%.
• New assistance for lower-income Ohioans in the form of an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) equal to 5% of the amount claimed for the federal EITC.
