Saturday, November 28, 2009
Tax-exempt fees proposed for Pa.
Post Gazette: "Large tax-exempt landowners would have to pay their host cities fees based on the size of their buildings, under legislation that state Sen. Wayne Fontana plans to introduce next week."
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4 comments:
So if we can't tax students, let's tax non-profits! Great idea....
I understand that our Mayor is trying to find a different way to fill the $15 million gap, but I don't think taxing students or non-profits is the way to go about. As mentioned in the article, taxing students could lead to students not coming to Pittsburgh, but studying in a different city. As for the non-profits, many already give back, much like UPMC. Taxing them seems crazy, as non-profits are suppose to get some tax advantages.
Hopefully, this whole mess gets sorted out soon.
While I understand that non-profits are capable of chewing up lots of resources and space that could generate tax revenue, the idea of partially taxing the tax-exempt just seems like a ludicrious idea. While the article does not touch on this topic, the idea of taxing non-profits does. Is it possible that some non-profits should no longer be non-profits? I'm not saying to do things like revoke a hospitals right to be a non-profit, I just sometimes feel that, especially in some theater settings, the idea of non-profit can be abused occasionally given how much space some non-profits consume.
Although I'm not too opposed to the idea of a student tax, this just seems ridiculous. How is this revenue supposed to be fair AND profitable? Non-profits do utilize the resources of the state, but what would happen if they weren't even there to begin with? They sometimes are helping to do the work that the government cannot do all by itself.
I strongly oppose the tuition tax since it is unfair to students (our use of city resources is not proportional to our tuition), and the revenue from the tax is going to fix the budget shortfall for pensions (completely unrelated to college students and their tuition).
Assessing fees on nonprofits may be the only solution that I've actually heard that could work (I've heard mention of other plans, but not what those plans are), but it's nowhere close to an ideal solution. Considering how much nonprofits like UPMC or universities give back to the city and how little the budget shortfall is in comparison (UPMC alone gave back $100 million to the city, and the budget shortfall is only $15 million), it seems like a bad idea to ruin relationships with Pittsburgh's nonprofits for so little gain.
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