Ohio: Legislature votes to amend residency requirement

With the passage of HB 494, the Ohio legislature recently amended the statute dealing with the presumption of domicile purposes of state income taxes. The amendment increases the amount of time, from 182 to 212 days, that a person may spend in Ohio before being presumed to be a resident for income tax purposes.

This change has implications in a variety of contexts, one of which we addressed last August in part I of our series on the complexities of a professional athlete’s tax calculations. It concludes the state in which the taxpayer athlete is domiciled is the state in which he or she will file a resident tax return, and pay tax on all income earned. But if an athlete is drafted, traded, or signed via free agency during the year, domicile can change, even if he or she maintained an Ohio home at some point during the year. Thus, the amendment may offer significant tax savings to an athlete who no longer is present in the state for the requisite number of days under the statute.