News Release
February 25 , 2005 - Columbus,
Ohio - Former Tax Commissioner
Inducted into Tax Hall of Fame
COLUMBUS (February 25, 2005) – Former tax commissioner and
tax attorney Edgar L. Lindley is the newest inductee into the
Ohio Tax Hall of Fame. The Worthington resident was recently
tabbed for the honor in Columbus at the annual Ohio Tax
Conference. He is the sixth inductee into the hall, which was
established in 2001.
"The contributions of these individuals have been especially
valuable to the citizens and businesses of Ohio because of
their professionalism and their commitment to ensuring the
fair administration of Ohio’s tax code," said state Tax
Commissioner William W. Wilkins.
Lindley began working at the Ohio Department of Taxation in
1949 as a legal researcher. Twenty-six years later in 1975,
Governor James A. Rhodes appointed him tax commissioner, a
post he held for almost eight years in January 1983 before
becoming a tax attorney at the Columbus office of Bricker and
Eckler until his retirement in 1994. His career also included
a stint as assistant attorney general.
Lindley was also a U.S. Marine fighter pilot in World War II,
flying the inverted-gull-winged fighter plane known as the
Corsair in close air support of American soldiers on the
ground in such Pacific theater hot spots as Okinawa.
Some of that war experience is reflected in a 1996 book of
poems Lindley wrote called “All’s Fair – Poems of Love and
War.” In the introduction, he writes of how his book reflects
a “schism” in the life of one who has experienced the horrors
of war and the poetry of living.
After the war, Lindley came to Columbus and eventually
enrolled in night classes at Franklin University Law School.
His career in taxation spanned over 40 years in the public
and private sectors.
As assistant attorney general and as a private attorney,
Lindley is credited with giving thoughtful consideration to
tax policy and subjecting conventional thinking about issues
to rigorous examination.
Lindley litigated almost 30 cases before the Ohio Supreme
Court involving a wide variety of tax issues and represented
the tax department before the United States Supreme Court in
Reserve Life Insurance Co. v. Bowers. That and many other
cases he litigated still stand as landmarks of Ohio tax law.
As a member of the board of editors of the Ohio Tax Review,
Lindley extended his critical analysis on a variety of Ohio
tax issues and contributed many articles, one of which served
as the lynch-pin of the Supreme Court’s current analysis of
the personal service exclusion from the sales tax.
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(For more information, contact Gary Gudmundson, ODT
Communications Director, at (614) 644-6903.)
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