City Tax Refund › Cincinnati
Cincinnati city tax refund: Form L-2-C and the itinerary of days outside
Your employer withheld Cincinnati tax, but some days you worked at home or out of town. Mark those days to get the L-2-C allocation, the refund return lines and an itinerary of individual dates.
Mark the days
Every workday starts as a day in the city. Pick a kind of day, then tap days. Weekends stay off.
Repeat a weekly pattern
Every
Holidays and leave you already marked stay as they are.
Lines to copy onto the form
Log of days out
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Copy a calendar from another page of this site
Copies its days, work week and job dates here. That claim is not changed.
How Form L-2-C counts your year
Line 1 is every day of the year: 365, or 366 in a leap year, or the days from your start date to your end date if you held the job for part of the year. Lines 2a to 2e take off the days you didn't work: Saturdays and Sundays (the 2025 form prints "104 Saturdays and Sundays in 2025"), holidays, sick leave, vacation, and any other days off, which you explain. What is left on line 3 is the days you actually worked.
Line 4 is the days you worked outside Cincinnati, from your itinerary; it may not include any day from lines 2a to 2e. Line 6, days in Cincinnati divided by days worked, is the share of your box 5 wages that Cincinnati taxes at 1.8%. The refund is box 19 minus that tax. Because leave comes off both sides of the fraction, taking vacation doesn't shrink the refund. The form doesn't say to round line 6, so this page keeps it exact and shows four decimals.
Try the 2025 example: Fridays at home and a trip to Louisville, 52 days outside, refund $270.74.
What to send
Mail the signed and dated Nonresident Refund Tax Return packet, copies of all W-2s showing boxes 1, 5, 19 and 20, Form L-2-C and the itinerary to the City of Cincinnati Income Tax Division, PO Box 637876, Cincinnati, OH 45263-7876. Don't staple them; the city returns incomplete packets unprocessed. Give the address where you work; check the box for work "performed remotely at home" only if you work 100% at home. Use one L-2-C for each employer.
Less than $10.00 is not refunded. File within three years of the date you paid the tax or the return was due, whichever is later: for 2025 that is April 15, 2029. In October 2026 Cincinnati has not posted a 2026 packet yet; a 2026 claim here follows the 2025 packet. This page covers wages and salaries for nonresidents only: not commission income (L-2-C Part II) or part-year residents. Anyone with other taxable income or estimated payments uses Cincinnati's regular individual return instead. If the city or county you live in taxes work done there, the days you get back may be taxed there instead: check before you file. Form arithmetic only, not tax advice.
Questions people ask
Can I count days I worked from home?
Yes, if you live outside Cincinnati. Mark those days as Home and the itinerary lists each one at your home city. The return's box for work "performed remotely at home" is for people who work 100% at home.
Why box 5 and not box 1?
The return says "Use Box 5, Not Box 1": box 5 (Medicare wages) is the qualifying wage for city tax. Reduce it by income from stock options, and add employer-sponsored unemployment compensation or wages exempt from Medicare tax under the grandfathering provision, if you had any.
I live in Cincinnati. Can I use this?
No. The instructions say a Cincinnati resident "may not allocate days worked out of the city." Part-year residents fill in their residency dates and may claim a credit for tax paid to other cities while they were residents; this page does not work that out.
Do I list date ranges on the itinerary?
No. Cincinnati asks for individual dates and locations in chronological order. The printout lists every day outside the city on its own line with its location, two columns to a page like the city's itinerary, with the total.
How far back can I claim?
Three years from the date of the tax payment, the date the return was due, or three months after the final determination of your federal tax, whichever is later. In late 2026 that leaves 2023, 2024 and 2025 open.
Sources: City of Cincinnati 2025 Nonresident Refund Tax Return packet (return, Form L-2-C, itinerary and instructions; PDF dated November 21, 2025) and the 2023 and 2024 packets, which are the same apart from the year; checked October 24, 2026. Customer service: (513) 352-2546.