Buckeye Reporter

The Buckeye Institute won a significant victory for its client Dr. Manal Morsy in Morsy v. Gentile (previously Morsy v. Dumas). The City of Cleveland abandoned its appeal in the case and agreed to 1) fully refund the taxes that were illegally taken from Dr. Morsy, 2) pay the interest owed to her according to Cleveland City Ordinance, and 3) reimburse her court costs.

“Cleveland had no legal authority to tax income Dr. Morsy earned working at her home in Pennsylvania during the pandemic,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute and the lead attorney representing Dr. Morsy. “By dropping its appeal and agreeing to issue a full refund to Dr. Morsy, with interest, and reimburse her court costs, the City of Cleveland has finally made it right.”

This is The Buckeye Institute’s second victory in the case.

“I’m so thankful for the efforts of The Buckeye Institute in helping me obtain my refund and establish that Ohio cities cannot tax non-Ohioans working in another state,” said Dr. Manal Morsy. “I am especially grateful for the outstanding support and commitment provided by Buckeye’s senior litigator Jay R. Carson to resolve my problem to its rightful conclusion.”

Dr. Manal Morsy lives in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia—more than 400 miles southeast of Cleveland. Prior to the pandemic, she commuted to her workplace in Cleveland, spent the week there, and returned to Pennsylvania on weekends. During the shutdown, she worked exclusively from her home, as ordered, and accordingly paid local income tax to her own municipality in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Cleveland continued to unlawfully tax Dr. Morsy under Ohio’s pandemic-era tax law—House Bill 197—which “deemed” all work performed in 2020 at her home—in Pennsylvania—to have been performed instead at her higher-taxed office location even though she never set foot there and was prohibited from working there during that time frame.