Sunday, November 11, 2007

Ohio lost revenue

If you are a regular reader you know about the upcoming nuptials between Gordon and the future Mrs. Gekko.

As part of the reception, we need to buy alcohol, and a lot of it. So we did what every normal Cincinnatian does when purchasing large quantities of alcohol... we drove to Kentucky.

Our tab at the Party Source was over $250.00. As I was loading our stash into the huge SUV, I couldn't help but notice the license plates on the cars in the parking lot.

Here was the count.

Ohio 22
Kentucky 2
Georgia 1
West Virginia 1

Just out of curiosity, how much revenue does the state of Ohio lose to Kentucky, Indiana & West Virginia on out of state booze and cigarette purchases?

Granted, in the scheme of billions of dollars of in state alcohol and cigarette sales, it's probably a pittance. But assume you were a for profit business. Would you just let the competition next door sell the same product to your customers over and over and over again?

It's not just the revenue from the taxes that Ohio loses out on, it's an entire mindset of state government that just doesn't give a crap about business generation within the state.

If you are an Ohio resident, wouldn't you prefer having operations like the Party Source in Ohio taking Kentuckians' money and generating jobs for Ohioan rather than vice versa?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I usually stop at the Party Source, too, whenever I'm in Cincinnati. I went to West Virginia to gamble last night. I didn't count license plates, but there were quite a few other Ohioans there. The strip club across the street from the racetrack seemed to be doing a good business, too, judging from the number of cars in the parking lot.

For more about Ohio's silly puritanism, and all it's costing our state, check out NoFunOhio.org.