Quote:
Originally Posted by Philly-Drew
After many years, we finally have a brand new Philly highrise thread and by page four we are in the same old knockdown tax discussion that’s been had dozens of times.
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The facts are that the city needs to completely overhaul it's tax code.
Philadelphia was the first city to implement a wage tax in 1939.
Mayor's Tate and Rizzo (AKA Mayor Crumb Bum) thought that raising property taxes was bad and didn't want to burden homeowners so they raised taxes on things that could move out...like wage and business taxes. So they did. Rizzo really jacked those taxes in the 1970's to pay for lavish public contracts that still haunt the city today....and the city lost close to 300000 residents. The wage taxes hit their highest in 1985 and within 5 years the city was teetering on bankruptcy.
So while they do need to levy taxes to pay for the city...they way they go about it puts too much burden on certain sources that keep job growth down. New York might be able to get away with it but Philadelphia cannot.
We wouldn't need 10 year tax abatements or soda taxes if we just had a tax code that made sense and was fair and equitable to all.
Commercial property owners have told they city they would pay higher rates than homeowners if they could bring down wage and business taxes. They know they could get their money back in a Philly creating far more jobs.