3-24-26 Sloan with Greg Lawson

you from doing entirely. Doesn't feel like free enterprise to me. Joining the show from the Buckeye Institute in Columbus is Greg Laws and Greg.

a tax bill. It just applies the logic tax to an airbnb or verbo or any of these short term rentals. But it does nothing about what is a growing problem in Ohio, which is that local governments are oftentimes preventing people from doing it. They're putting bands on airbnbs and verbos. That's something that is happening under the home rules stuff. I think we've talked about them earlier before, and and

we think that's a terrible situation. Uh So, you know, I'll tell you this, You can't just flat tax on something and then just give keep government with the power to just continue to stand things. It really is violating people's personal property rights. And we think that's the bad idea.

on seems criminal to me. You're already paying the property tax. I got to pay you more tax because I'm renting it out.

argument that's there. And you know, first of all, we don't like new taxes.

that isn't under control. And there's several things that deal with this. First of all, you can still have and should still be able to have local loosen flaws and things that kind of people are doing crazy stuff or you know, having animal house happening and you know next door to you. You know, there's ways to address it. By the way, folks like Airbnb have policies for the platform where if you start doing things like that, you're renting it out and you maybe one time you can

get away with it. But you know, it's like I think it's like a three times in you're out sort of thing where if this is a recurring pattern and you're not taking responsibility in your neighborhood with your property. You can't use their platform anymore to rent it out. So we have protections for people. We shouldn't be banning them, but we certainly shouldn't be taxing people and then not guaranteeing that you still can have the right to do what you want to with your ro.

Cincinnati and I could never figure this out. Is if you own property in Cincinnati and you rent it out and people are you know, either Airbnb or verbal or just rental just you know, regular rental, long term rail, short timroil, if those people are causing a problem and then you know, causing the neighborhood maybe racing up and down the street, or there's trash all over the place, or playing loud music right there, nuisance, the city of

Cincinnati makes somehow the landlord eventually responsible for that. Like no, if you're an adult and you're running property and you are doing stuff like that, that that that that's on the city that's on law enforcement to cite that person that shouldn't be on the landlord. I mean, if they're in there dealing drugs and I know about it may be a different story. But if they're just a nuisance,

that's the individual's responsibility. I you know, I don't get a ticket speeding ticket because you know my son uses my car, let's say. And that was the argument with speed cameras obviously, is you're citing me for something I can't control.

exactly right. That's what should happen. Now if you're if you're again doing this on an ongoing basis where you're not taking care of that the people that you have coming in and this is a an isolated incident that's happening all the time, I think there may be a little bit of a different argument there because at that point you are sort of not taking the responsibility with your own property at that point, and then you are

having an effort impact from your neighbors and stuff. But the point that it is disturbing about this is when when you make these blank determinations by the local governments just not doing which is actually, I think really remarkable. We need to because you mentioned earlier we have this profit tax issue here, and we have local governments who should be scared quite a bit about the prospects of

that making the ballot. Whether it does or not, nobody can say for sure at this point because they haven't submitted signatures for this constitucial mekema. But if that happens, you never believe they're going to want to have some revenue. But you're gonna have a hard time having revenue by the time you start fanning everybody from being able to do those things. It just makes no sense from so many different perspectives.

because this is not isolating. What this isn't one or two jurisdictions, and it isn't just one or two places in the state. Really, it's all over the state the proportion, So it's not it's not just a regional phenomenon. And this is the problem that I see, which is local government, you know, kind of running them off with these things. Yeah,

it's a it's actually a much bigger issue. I mean, there's there's a whole bunch of problems frankly with local government Inhia, and I think I've molmented some of those in the past your show and probably will again we're on the same page, and this is just one more

example of it. So you know, again, UH, there's some bills that are out there, by the way, UH that would have some degree, would would maybe do the tax, but would include prohibitions and preempt local governments from being able to do the banning of the short term rentals.

There's been Second Amendment issues, there's been issues like plastic bags, UH, some jurisdictions way into band cracking, and so there's all these various things that have happened.

say no, you can't do that. They and we think that under certain circumstances that is an appropriate thing, because what you end up with is you end up with a you know, it's sort of a little bit of a joke to say it this way, but it's a crazy patchwork of different regulations and US terurisdictions. But that makes it hard to do different things. And it's one of the problems Ohio has, and it's a mid Western state issue in general because of sort of the history there.

But when you look at southern states and you look at Western states, and you look at things that are really growing with populations that are really expanding. You know, you can talk about the weather and stuff, and I'm sure that has some degree of influence, but it's taxes. It's regulations and kind of taxes and regulations now are worse at the local level than they are at the state level. Well, that is something that she needs to deal with.

know why, but to Texas primarily. And now she's she's begging those people to come back because they you know, she guys said, I'm gonna screw you when it comes to Texas.

at the top of the insane property tax were paying. Now, if you want to rent out your home of a weekend as someone, they want to tax you and there's no protections there for you, basically meaning they're going to tax the activity and not protect your right to do it. And you know you could pay taxes today and face a local band tomorrow in your state or in your township municipality. HOA is different because that's part of the

deal when you buy something in an HOA. But Greg Lawson, I can't help but think back to all of these seismic shifts, these change agents that happened in the world back in the day when Uber and Lyft came along. I remember tax I remember the cab drivers Like at CBG at the airport, we're up an arms saying wait, well, hold on just a second. If you have these independent people coming in not panting tax they're not paying all these fees and fares, what about they wanted to protect

their industry. I think the same thing is happening here with the rentals. This has got to be the hotel motel industry that pays an exorbitant amount of taxes, Like every time we raise a tax, well, we'll just add to the luxury check. We'll just add to the hotel motel tax on this. And when you get a hotel night for I don't know, one hundred and fifty bucks, you get the bill and it's like, you know, almost two hundred dollars are probably more than two hundred because

of the taxes added on here. I feel for the established businesses like hotels motels in this case taxes, I mean New York City alone, the price of a hack medallion, which basically is a transferable physical license plate that's a round circle to medallion and they attach it to the hood of a yellow cab in New York the cost of one of those medallions is now over a million dollars.

So from a business perspective, it doesn't seem fair that they're competing with uber and left drivers who don't have to pay that exorbitant tax.

hand is correct. That's an economic theory. It says it it's a right thing to do is to make sure that people that are similar kinds of businesses aren't being disproportionately impacted one versus another because of a specific rule or in taxation. You want it to be fair across the board. And so that's certainly the argument they're using. And I think you have to look at what are

we doing with these revenues. I mean, we've had lodging tetch for a while, and unfortunately it's a sort of scene that the Sophiallo counters like kind of right, because what you're essentially saying is we're going to raise the revenue on the backs of people who don't necessarily live so that we can do that. Now, you know, I mean they that is, I mean, Florida certainly does do that with some of their taxes and stuff, because they

have a lot of tourism and stuff. That comes through there. Uh, and so I get what the rationale is, but we need to be really careful how we think about this. And when we're doing this, and you occasionally see bills and or things and budget builds and stuff, they'll had an additional thing for one visitor Beuera overs another visitors bureau.

And I'm not trying to just brag on them. They can't help to raise awareness, to get it, do certain things to build the infrastructure to bring in concert or conferences or what are sporting events and stuff like that, and so there may be sum rationale for some of that, but we need to be very careful when we're applying this and then when we start ap playing it to new people, we need to really think about what we're doing and how we're spending the existing resources that we have.