Dollar Bank, FSB v. Harris

Ohio Supreme Court·Decided August 13, 2026·No. 2025-0412·Published

Opinion

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as Dollar Bank, FSB v. Harris, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3069.]

NOTICE

This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is published.

SLIP OPINION NO. 2026-OHIO-3069 DOLLAR BANK, FSB, APPELLANT, v. HARRIS, TAX COMMR., APPELLEE. [Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as Dollar Bank, FSB v. Harris, Slip Opinion No.

2026-Ohio-3069.]

Taxation—Financial-institutions tax—R.C. Ch. 5726—Dormant Commerce Clause of United States Constitution—Board of Tax Appeals correctly affirmed tax commissioner’s denial of bank’s request for tax refund—Ohio’s financial- institutions tax is internally consistent and therefore does not unfairly discriminate against interstate commerce—Board of Tax Appeals’ decision affirmed.

(No. 2025-0412—Submitted February 10, 2026—Decided August 13, 2026.)

APPEAL from the Board of Tax Appeals, No. 2022-1361.

DEWINE, J., authored the opinion of the court, which KENNEDY, C.J., and FISCHER, BRUNNER, DETERS, HAWKINS, and SHANAHAN, JJ., joined.

SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

DEWINE, J.

{¶ 1} Ohio taxes banks by way of a regressive-rate structure. The upshot of this scheme is that the more business a bank does in Ohio, the lower its effective tax rate. This case presents the question of whether this method of taxation is unconstitutional under the “dormant” aspect of the federal Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

{¶ 2} Dollar Bank, FSB, does most of its business in Pennsylvania, but it also has branches in Ohio. It doesn’t much like Ohio’s scheme for taxing banks. Its complaint is that because Ohio adjusts tax rates downward based on how much business a bank does in the State, it is forced to pay more in taxes than a similarly sized bank that operates exclusively in Ohio. This, Dollar Bank says, is illegal discrimination against interstate commerce in violation of the United States Constitution.

{¶ 3} Claiming that Ohio’s tax scheme is unconstitutional, Dollar Bank asked the State of Ohio to refund some of the taxes that it had paid. The tax commissioner denied the refund request and the Board of Tax Appeals (“BTA”) affirmed that decision on appeal. Because we find no constitutional problem with Ohio’s tax scheme, we affirm the decision of the BTA.

I. BACKGROUND

{¶ 4} Dollar Bank is a chartered federal savings bank that is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dollar Bank has about 70 branches, with locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Maryland. About 30 branches are in Ohio.

{¶ 5} Banking is a competitive industry, with consumers shopping for the best rates on loans and deposits. So naturally, Dollar Bank tries to keep its expenses down, including its tax bill. States also compete for banks, seeking to encourage financial institutions to conduct business in their respective state. To compete for business, Ohio created its financial-institutions tax (the “FIT”), and structures it in a particular way.

January Term, 2026

A. The FIT

{¶ 6} Ohio levies the FIT on banks and other financial institutions “for the privilege of doing business in this state.” R.C. 5726.02(A). A bank initially needs two numeric components to compute what it owes under the FIT. First, the bank must determine its “total equity capital.” R.C. 5726.01(S). Total equity capital is calculated based on the equity holdings of a financial institution, including stocks and retained earnings. Id. Second, the bank must determine its “apportionment factor.” R.C. 5726.05(A). The apportionment factor is the percentage of a bank’s total gross receipts from activities in Ohio as compared to the bank’s total gross receipts from all locations during that year. R.C. 5726.05(B). The bank’s “total Ohio equity capital” is then determined by “multipl[ying]” its total equity capital by its apportionment factor. R.C. 5726.04(C)(1). So a bank with $500 million in total equity capital that generated 10 percent of its gross receipts in Ohio would have an Ohio equity capital of $50 million.

{¶ 7} The last relevant calculation requires determining the amount of tax the bank owes. While most income taxes tend to feature a progressive-rate structure, whereby “higher incomes are taxed at a higher rate,” Black’s Law Dictionary (12th Ed. 2024) (defining “progressive tax”), the FIT features a threetiered , regressive-rate structure, whereby the tax rate decreases as a bank’s total Ohio equity capital increases, see id. (defining “regressive tax”). The first $200 million of a bank’s Ohio equity capital is taxed at 0.8 percent, equity capital between $200 million and $1.3 billion is taxed at 0.4 percent, and equity capital above $1.3 billion is taxed at 0.25 percent. R.C. 5726.04(A)(1)(b). This regressive- rate structure incentivizes banks to conduct more business in Ohio.

B. The Proceedings Below

{¶ 8} Dollar Bank filed refund claims with the tax commissioner for tax years 2016 through 2020, contending the FIT was unconstitutional in its application. See R.C. 5726.30(A) (authorizing FIT refunds). Although it initially

SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

sought higher amounts, Dollar Bank later amended its request to seek a refund of between $461,732 and $640,158 for each tax year.

{¶ 9} The tax commissioner denied the request, explaining that the tax commissioner does not have the authority to determine the constitutionality of the FIT. See State ex rel. Kingsley v. State Emp. Relations Bd., 2011-Ohio-5519, ¶ 18, quoting State ex rel. Columbus S. Power Co., v. Sheward, 63 Ohio St.3d 78, 81 (1992) (“‘it is settled that an administrative agency is without jurisdiction to determine the constitutional validity of a statute’”).

{¶ 10} Dollar Bank then appealed to the BTA. The BTA declined to consider the constitutionality of the FIT and affirmed the tax commissioner’s denial of Dollar Bank’s refund request. See Cleveland Gear Co. v. Limbach, 35 Ohio St.3d 229 (1988), paragraph one of the syllabus (“The Board of Tax Appeals is an administrative agency, a creature of statute, and is without jurisdiction to determine the constitutional validity of a statute.”). This appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

{¶ 11} Because Dollar Bank attacks the constitutionality of the FIT, it “must overcome the presumption that the statute is constitutional.” VVF Intervest, L.L.C. v. Harris, 2025-Ohio-5680, ¶ 41. It is “only when . . . clear incompatibility between the constitution and the law appear, that the judicial power can refuse to execute it.” Cincinnati, Wilmington & Zanesville RR. Co. v. Clinton Cty. Commrs., 1 Ohio St. 77, 82-83 (1852).

A. The (Dormant) Commerce Clause

{¶ 12} Dollar Bank’s primary argument is that the FIT as applied to Dollar Bank violates the dormant Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause vests in Congress the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Although the clause’s text speaks solely to the regulatory authority of Congress, the United States Supreme Court has held that “the Clause also ‘contain[s] a further, negative command,’ one effectively forbidding the

January Term, 2026

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