Ohio Justices Interrogate Bank on Challenge to Regressive Tax

Two Ohio Supreme Court justices battered a bank’s attorney at oral arguments Tuesday on its suggestion that the state’s financial institutions tax discriminates against out-of-state businesses.

Justice R. Patrick DeWine jumped in right away to point out that the alleged discrimination just turns on how much business banks do in Ohio, not on whether they are based in Ohio or elsewhere. “If every state imposed the same tax scheme, you would have the same result,” he told Dollar Bank FSB’s attorney Kyle O. Sollie of Reed Smith LLP.

Sollie answered that US Supreme Court cases on dormant commerce clause discrimination ...