Feasibility Study Consultant in Columbus, OH: SBA and USDA

A feasibility study in Columbus is read by a lender or a Certified Development Company before anyone else, and the first question that reader has about this market is not how fast it is growing. It is which line the subject sits on. Three of the four things that move an operating model here change at a boundary that is not the county line, and two of them change at a city line that runs straight through a county. **The payroll tax follows the work, not the address on the lease.** Ohio Revised Code 718.011 puts the withholding duty on the municipality where the employee performs the services once that employee passes twenty days there in a calendar year. The City of Columbus publishes a rate and residence credit list, and the spread inside this metro is wide: Columbus itself is 2.50% with a 100.00% credit, Bexley 2.50% with 65.00%, and Sunbury and Pataskala 1.00% with no credit at all. A worker who lives in a city granting no credit pays twice, and a staffing plan that assumes one rate for the whole metro is wrong before it starts. **The sales tax boundary is a city line.** The Ohio Department of Taxation posts Franklin County at 8.00%, the highest county rate in the state alongside Cuyahoga, against 6.75% in Fairfield and 7.00% in Delaware, Union and Madison. Its 1.00% transit levy then follows four cities across the county line into Delaware, Fairfield, Licking and Union, so two sites in the same county can carry different rates depending on which municipality annexed the ground. **And the state taxes receipts, not profit.** The commercial activity tax is levied on taxable gross receipts at two and six-tenths mills per dollar above an exclusion the statute sets at six million dollars from 2025, and the statute says it shall not be billed or invoiced to another person. A break-even year still owes it, and the model has to carry it above the line.

The Columbus, OH metro is home to about 2,225,377 residents per the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates, led by Franklin County at 1,356,303; Delaware County at 237,966; Licking County at 184,898; Fairfield County at 167,762.

A national template prices a market by its population and its growth rate. Columbus has 2,225,377 residents across ten counties, and neither figure tells a lender what this metro actually does to an operating statement. What does that is a set of rules that change inside the metro rather than at its edge.

The municipal income tax is the first of them. Ohio lets each municipality levy its own income tax, and ORC 718.011 decides which one gets withheld: the municipality where the services are performed, once the employee has spent more than twenty days there. The employer may keep remitting to the principal place of work instead, but only under the exception the statute names. The City of Columbus publishes a rate and residence credit list. It is a reference list rather than a roster of this metro, and it carries its own disclaimer that it may not be all inclusive, so a specific municipality is confirmed with that municipality before a model is signed. Columbus itself is 2.50% with a 100.00% credit. Bexley is 2.50% with a 65.00% credit. Sunbury and Pataskala are 1.00% with no credit at all.

Two of the entries on that list are not municipalities in the ordinary sense. The Etna-Reynoldsburg Joint Economic Development District carries 2.00% and the Marysville-Jerome Township JEDD carries 1.50%, both with a 0.00% credit. A JEDD is township ground taxed at a municipal rate under an agreement between a township and a city. A site plan that reads the zoning map and stops there will not see it.

The commercial activity tax is the second. ORC 5751.02 levies it on taxable gross receipts rather than on profit, and ORC 5751.03 sets the rate at two and six-tenths mills per dollar. The exclusion amount the statute names is three million dollars in 2024 and six million dollars beginning in 2025. The part that matters for a pro forma is in ORC 5751.02 itself: the tax shall not be billed or invoiced to another person. It is not a pass-through to the customer, so it sits in operating expenses and it is owed in a year with no profit in it.

The third is the one most likely to be missed, because it works in reverse. ORC 319.301 reduces each voted property tax levy every year so that it raises the same number of dollars from carryover property as it raised the year before. Carryover property excludes land and improvements that were not taxed in both the preceding year and the current year. A newly built asset is therefore not carryover property, and it enters the roll at the undiminished voted rate rather than at the reduced effective rate its neighbours pay. A study that takes an effective rate off a comparable building and applies it to new construction understates the tax line.

One market figure sits on this page, and it needs a caveat larger than usual. Greater Columbus is a logistics market, and Cushman and Wakefield's second-quarter 2026 MarketBeat reports 4.7 percent of that industrial stock standing empty at $6.33 a square foot. Real numbers about a real market, and almost entirely beside the point for the borrowers on this page: warehouses are not among the ten classes in this SBA analysis, and the SBA record above is hotels, restaurants and day care. No retail MarketBeat covers this market. The companion post carries the detail.

Nationally, the U.S. Small Business Administration closed fiscal year 2025 having guaranteed 84,400 7(a) and 504 loans for $44.8 billion. The Columbus metro's own share of that is computed here from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the ten member counties, never read from a district office total. In fiscal year 2025 the metro recorded 754 7(a) approvals for $291,342,800 and 27 504 approvals for $15,230,000.

The lender concentration in this metro is unusual and worth naming, because it changes who a borrower is likely to be talking to. The most active 7(a) lender by fiscal year 2025 approval count was The Huntington National Bank with 358 loans, ahead of U.S. Bank, National Association with 43 and Northeast Bank with 36. On the 504 side Alloy Development Co., Inc. and Community Capital Development Corporation each recorded 10 loans. A report written for this market is written to those desks.

Across fiscal years 2010 to 2026 disbursed, the ten asset classes in this analysis together account for 1,146 7(a) loans and 125 504 loans in this metro. The full asset-class table, with charge-off rates where the resolved cohort is large enough to show one, is on the Columbus feasibility market research post.

USDA Business and Industry and Community Facilities credit runs on a statutory geography rather than on a county line. Under 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(A) the terms rural and rural area mean any area other than a city or town of more than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town. The Columbus urbanized core is therefore out. The 50,000 inhabitant test is the statute's general rule; the statute sets a different, lower threshold for community facility direct loans and grants, so which programme is being used matters as much as where the site is. MMCG's work here is for guaranteed lenders.

What remains in this metro is the outer part of the member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Columbus itself. Because the test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the town, MMCG verifies eligibility at the address on the USDA Rural Development eligibility map at intake, before any work on the study begins. No town is named on this page as eligible.

A hotel feasibility study Columbus lenders can underwrite starts from the metro's own SBA record and from the county the site is in. Across fiscal years 2010 to 2026 disbursed, hotels and motels in the Columbus MSA drew 80 SBA 7(a) loans for $187,535,100 at a 4.3 percent charge-off rate and 22 SBA 504 loans. That is the largest 7(a) dollar total among the ten asset classes in this metro record, ahead of restaurants at $172,384,600 and child day care services at $117,811,700.

The lodging-specific work sits on top of that record rather than replacing it: demand and penetration at the address, the construction or renovation budget, and the municipal income tax and commercial activity tax lines carried inside operating expenses before the debt service coverage test is run.

These are the points a Columbus underwriter checks first. Each traces to a government publisher or to the SBA's own file.

MMCG starts from three things: the project address, the asset class, and the name of the lender or Certified Development Company contact who will receive the report. From the address it reads the municipality and the county, which together set the income tax rate, the residence credit, the sales tax rate and whether a JEDD agreement applies. From the staffing plan it maps the likely commute shed across the ten counties, which is what determines the mix of withholding rates running through payroll.

The report that follows names its sources the way this page does. Municipal rates and credits come from the City of Columbus Division of Income Tax list, which carries its own disclaimer that it is a reference and may not be all inclusive, so the rate for the specific municipality is confirmed with that municipality before the model is signed. Statutory material comes from the Ohio Revised Code as published by the Legislative Service Commission. Sales tax rates come from the Department of Taxation's own rate map. The SBA record is computed in house from the FOIA release.

MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study consultancy that specializes in SBA and USDA feasibility studies for lenders, Certified Development Companies, USDA Rural Development guaranteed lenders and the borrowers they serve, with Columbus among the markets it covers. The practice is led by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA, Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Reports are prepared under SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 files and under 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA Business and Industry and Community Facilities files, and each one states which schedule, rate and boundary it relied on so a credit officer can check the work rather than take it on trust. Pricing starts at $4,900, standard delivery runs 9 to 16 business days, a rush track delivers in 5 business days, and every inquiry receives a response within 12 business hours.