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Taxes
Once property-tax reassessments are completed this year, Philadelphians will end up paying out an estimated $90 million more altogether. Mayor Michael Nutter, who insists the fix to the city's arbitrary assessment system is not a tax hike, conceded in last week's budget address that it “isn't the easiest, most popular reform that we could have taken on.” But it might not be the hardest. After all, wealthy nonprofits like the University of Pennsylvania will pay somewhere between little and nothing to the city this year ― and Nutter, despite Philly’s desperate financial straits, seems content to let them do so.
Many universities contribute what are called payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, to their host cities: Baltimore, in recent years, received $5.4 million annually from PILOTs, Boston $17.4 million.
Not in Philly. Here, nonprofits contributed a piddling $420,223 in 2010, $496,810.40 in 2011.
News editor Isaiah Thompson is live-tweeting today's City Council hearings on the proposed sweetened beverages tax, school funding and paid sick leave. Follow him @isaiah_thompson or look for the tag #phillycouncil.
So get to paying your back taxes if you haven't already, slackers.
As of June 8 about halfway in the city reaped just $7 million from the tax amnesty program, though the goal is that it'll bring in $30 million. The city claims that the majority of the money will come in at the very end which makes sense; the people who owe these taxes in the first place are, by definition, the worst kind of procrastinators.
The state got $261 million from its recent tax amnesty program much more than its $190 million goal. Let's hope Philly can surpass expectations, too.
Okay, if movies have taught me one thing, it's that robots will soon become sentient beings and kill us all. It's the reason I don't trust Roombas and it's the reason this ad creeps me the fuck out. Pay your taxes, or Pennsylvania (or should I say Skynet?) will find you.
(h/t Meg)
Creepy... and effective. I've already paid my taxes, but I'm considering sending another check, just to keep them from vaporizing my home.
Surely the Tea Party is freaking out about this.
Starting toady and running through June 25, all individuals and businesses (with some exceptions here and there) that owe back taxes to the city can fork up the money without paying any penalties or attorney fees, and only paying half the interest. It goes for all debts that have accrued between 1986 and 2009, and applies to all major types of city taxes.
This is the first time the city has done this since '86. Mayor Nutter believes $40 million can be collected through this, and seeing as how the city is paying up to $13 million for marketing and running the program, it should be interesting to see how that pans out. Check out the Philadelphia Tax Amnesty website for more info.
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An occasional, inconsistent, and improbable series on this year's budget.
The Coalition for Essential Services a coalition of labor, service, and community groups dedicated to getting a "fair budget" passed by Council meaning, in their case, preserving city services and jobs rallied outside City Hall this morning to get Council's attention focused on what they consider the fairest way to balance the city's budget: raising (or "rolling back" to mid-nineties levels) the "gross receipts" portion of the business privilege tax.
This comes as Mayor Nutter's proposed trash fee appears all but dead, and the sugary beverages tax isn't doing much better. Councilman Frank DiCicco has withdrawn his own alternative, a proposed 12% property tax hike, and Councilman Wilson Goode has introduced a two-year 9% property tax hike instead, apparently backed by democratic Council leadership, to balance the budget.
But Council is just starting to hold its neighborhood community budget hearings, and they're already being told exactly what they were told last year: "don't raise our property taxes."
Is it just me, or is it strange that we spend about half a year waiting for Council to make up its mind on given budget?
Anyway: back to the gross-receipts thing.
The idea is this: the gross receipts tax is a tax on net sales rather than revenue/income.
Because large companies can easily hide or move their income, the reasoning goes, the gross receipts tax is the only way to tax the operations of major, national retailers in the area.
One of the strongest arguments against raising this tax is that, because it taxes sales regardless of income, it can tax a business that isn't turning a profit. To answer this challenge, the Coalition is proposing that all businesses with receipts under $500,000 be exempted.
It's an interesting idea, and the exemption is clever - I don't think anyone wants to hurt small businesses right now, but getting a better cut from Coca Cola, etc. it could gain steam.
Council members Bill Green and Maria Quinones-Sanchez have so far been the most interested in potentially revising the gross receipts tax.
Anybody out there want to weigh in on this one? Got a better idea to balance the budget? (And if you're going to say, "cut city jobs," that's fine, but no getting off easy: which department anyone want to take up the line-item challenge?).
Thanks Isaiah! 40% of big businesses taxed by the GRT (over $500,000 in Receipts and therefore not exempted under our plan) aren't even based in Philadelphia. They rely on our city services to create markets and access for their products. They aren't going to stop selling their products in our city, and they don't provide any jobs for Philadelphia, so taxing them is win-win for us. Zachary H Coalition for Essential Services PhillyCES.org
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by philly news now. philly news now said: Budget fuss: Coalition urges use of gross receipts tax to balance budget: An occasional, inconsistent, and impr... http://bit.ly/cW0tkT [...]
How about thinking outside the box and limiting the proposed "gross receipts" tax to one full business week of the year.
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