CLEVELAND — Local journalism is important and crucial to change, and Clevelanders will see the impacts of it next week.
Remember that Cleveland city income tax form I told you about last year?
To recap, the city tax form is a municipal income tax document. It asks for your employment, residence tax, and income information. It's also a standard form that is separate from your regular filings.
Many of you reached out to me about receiving audits in the mail from the city, claiming that failure to file the city income tax form resulted in hundreds, even thousands of dollars being owed to Cleveland.
When money wasn't paid in a timely manner, Clevelanders then told me they started receiving threats of legal action.
"It's heartbreaking," Stephanie Thornton said in November 2025. "This is the worst time ever. Absolute worst time ever. I work for the government myself, but I'm still struggling to pay my bills."
Many, if not all, the people I spoke with about the income form said they had no clue about it until it was too late.
RELATED: Cleveland threatens residents with legal action over city income tax form issues
The city's Assistant Finance Director, Kevin Preslan, said, "We received information from a lot of different sources. We received it from the states, from the IRS. There's some delay in us getting that information. It's not always the easiest information to come through, either. It's something that we've been recently working on to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of it because we do want to reach those taxpayers sooner."
The city previously told me it acknowledges it could do a better job communicating with residents and was working on a plan to ensure no one is left in the dark moving forward.
Since the start of our coverage, Preslan said, "We definitely received additional traffic via calls, emails in terms of residents who were unaware of the obligation."
The obligation of filing the form is statewide, according to Preslan.
He said Ohio is "rare" in doing so compared to most of the rest of the country.
As of next week, though, the city is rolling out a new initiative to ensure the income tax form that needs to be filed separately from regular filings is easier to handle for residents.
"Through your story, we're going to be announcing our F.I.L.E. initiative," Cleveland's Communications Strategist Tyler Sinclair said on Thursday.
F.I.L.E. stands for Filing Income Locally and Efficiently.
Sinclair explained the initiative will be a comprehensive plan consisting of a variety of "spreading awareness" methods, including:
- Social media
- Public service announcements on TV 20
- Voice broadcasting through the Department of Aging
- Partnerships with local media outlets
"We're gonna be starting early next week posting," Sinclair said. "Just general explainers of what you need to do, other posts about who you can contact for assistance. We're not looking at this as just a one-way information dump. We truly wanna make this something that's transactional."
Sinclair said the posts will also allow for residents to ask questions, whether it's generalized or based on a specific case.
He also mentioned the city is hoping to develop partnerships with online tax services, like TurboTax, in hopes that the platform will include a reminder to Cleveland users to file their income tax forms.
I also asked if people would be made aware of their options if audited, like the appeal process.
"I do think that it will be part of the initiative that we are going to be rolling out in terms of how best to communicate that out as well as the obligation in general. That's definitely something we're willing to consider," Preslan said.
The changes seem easy enough, so I asked the city why and how this initiative came about.
"I would say because of Kaylee Olivas sitting right here," he said. "The really only communicative method that we use to reach out other than including messaging on our website was through utility bill inserts. After you brought it to our attention through your reporting, it started to get me to think a little bit more. Why did this happen this way? Is it something that was kind of status quo? That appears to kind of be what it was."
Sinclair said through his research, he reviewed how other states and other cities promote income tax form awareness.
"At the end of the day we're human on the other line here, and I think that's one of the biggest points I wanna make is we understand things happen, you know, life happens and whatever that situation may be, we're here to listen and we're here to try to help as best we can," Sinclair said.
This initiative will continue evolving over time to meet the needs of Clevelanders, according to Sinclair.
Sinclair said public libraries also offer tax packets that give step-by-step instructions.
Additionally, Preslan said the city offers taxpayer assistance free of charge.
The official rollout of the initiative will be sometime next week.
If you are in need of assistance, call the Central Collection Agency at (216) 664-2070.
