Put-in-Bay business loses refund case before Ohio Supreme Court
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court has denied an appeal from a Put-in-Bay business that sought a $269,000 tax refund from the village for resort-area taxes paid from January 2011 through June 2016.
Colonial Inc., which does business as Island Beverage & Beer Barrel Saloon on Put-in-Bay, originally filed a refund claim in 2018 with state Tax Commissioner Jeff McClain.
McClain rejected the claim, as did the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals (BTA).
According to the court’s ruling issued Thursday, Colonial sought to recover a locally imposed resort-area gross-receipts excise tax (the “resort-area tax”), which Put-in-Bay originally enacted in 1995.
Colonial argued that under Ohio Revised Code 5739.101, the village must reenact the resort-area tax after each decennial census because the village’s qualification to impose the tax depends on the result of each census.
Because the village did not reenact its resort-area tax after the 2010 census until July 2016, Colonial contended that it was entitled to a refund of $269,431 in resort-area taxes that it paid from Jan. 1, 2011 through June 30, 2016.
In its opinion, the court disagreed with Colonial’s contention that “if a locality has not declared itself to be a ‘resort area’ based on the most recent decennial census relative to the tax-year at issue, no resort tax is owed.”
The court noted the ORC. 5739.101(A) states that “[t]he legislative authority of a municipal corporation, by ordinance or resolution may declare the municipal corporation to be a resort area for the purposes of this section,” if certain criteria are met, and ORC 5739.101(B) states that “the legislative authority of a municipal corporation or township, in its ordinance or resolution declaring itself a resort area under this section, may levy a tax on the privilege of engaging in the business of making sales in the political subdivision or providing intrastate transportation of persons or property to or from the political subdivision.
“Notably absent from these provisions and from the other relevant Revised Code sections is any language indicating that a previously enacted resort-area tax automatically ‘sunsets’ (i.e., ceases to be operative ) in light of a new decennial census. Nor do the relevant statutes state that the declaration of resort-area status and the imposition of a resort-area tax must be renewed at ten-year intervals,” the court wrote in affirming the BTA decision.
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