Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Pennsylvania > Pittsburgh
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:00 PM
 
Location: Marshall-Shadeland, Pittsburgh, PA
32,606 posts, read 77,287,663 times
Reputation: 19071

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by squarian View Post
Thanks for the nostalgia blast, curtis.
He's good at that!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:02 PM
 
Location: Mid-Atlantic
12,529 posts, read 17,446,660 times
Reputation: 10629
It was more a rhetorical question, doesn't really affect me, I drink in Butler County. I don't believe many bars shut down due to it, but it makes for good talk radio fodder.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:06 PM
 
6,596 posts, read 8,916,294 times
Reputation: 4673
How does a bar become delinquent on the drink tax to the tune of 30 grand? The bar should collect the tax at the time of sale -- It does not make sense for them to have lost this money since they've already collected it. I could accept the argument that the tax decreased sales overall, but that is not what it sounds like happened in the case of Mr. Smalls. They either weren't collecting the tax, or "borrowed" from the collected tax money and used it for their own business expenses.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Copanut View Post
But why a drink tax? Why not tax McDonalds, they serve more people and cause more health problems.
it's difficult to argue that McDonald's is a larger public health issue than alcohol.

I would counter "Why not a drink tax?" Lots of things are already taxed at about the same rate do to regular sales tax, why are drinks excluded?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:13 PM
 
5,894 posts, read 6,842,546 times
Reputation: 4107
Quote:
Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday View Post
I would counter "Why not a drink tax?" Lots of things are already taxed at about the same rate do to regular sales tax, why are drinks excluded?
They were already subject to sales tax, the drink tax is in addition to that.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:17 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by UKyank View Post
I can't believe that the adjective of only would be used to describe 40 local businesses being put out of business by a new tax dreamed up by the county.
First, again, likely the number is considerably lower than 40, since very likely some or indeed most of those businesses would have gone out of business anyway, and you also have to offset any business gains from shifted demand.

Second--there is no such thing as a tax that doesn't cause some sort of economic harm to someone. But at the same time, we actually do need taxes to pay for certain things, including public transit, and in fact a lot of economic harm will be done if you refuse to pay for those things.

So if you are going to be at all rational about these issues, this is how you have to talk: you can try to minimize the harm caused by your tax scheme, but you can't eliminate it, and therefore when someone alleges some economic harm caused by a tax or proposed tax, you have to try to ascertain the relative magnitude of that alleged harm.

Or you could approach it from a purely emotional "oh my gosh we should never have to make hard choices surely there is a better way I just blame the unions why can't I have my cake and eat it too and so on" approach that is very fashionable in certain circles these days. But I am quite confident that making policy choices on that basis just makes the choices even harder in the future.

Quote:
but I'm guessing you wouldn't support an expansion of the drink tax to all other merchandise sales?
Personally, I'd have no problem with the County using a general sales tax instead of the drink tax.

But of course there is a bigger picture here. Both the County and the state contribute funding to PAT (in fact the County has to supply a certain amount of funds to qualify for its share of state funding). How exactly the County collects the revenues it then uses to fund PAT is a somewhat important issue, but not nearly as important as the issue of how much the County and the state respectively are actually going to contribute to funding PAT.

Now of course some people are just anti-transit and want all those numbers to be $0. But if you aren't just flat out anti-transit in that fashion, you then have to be concerned that if the state wants to continually cut its contribution to PAT, the County will need to increase its contribution in response.

And so if you are actually concerned about the ways in which the County is collecting revenues to fund its contributions to PAT, you should probably also be concerned about the state trying to cut PAT's funding.

Of course this gets very complicated because obviously the state needs to collect revenues too, some of which would come from the County. Indeed, as I always note, the County would likely be better off if the state just got out of the transportation business entirely, and let each county fund transportation for itself.

Unfortunately, that deal is unlikely to come along anytime soon, and more likely from this particular state government will be a deal that increases the amount of money that is taken from the County without giving us a fair share of that money back. And one of the ways that could happen would be by shifting state transportation funding share from transit to roads, which Corbett has already proposed before.

So that's the stuff really worth worrying about right now. If we also want to talk about using a broader sales tax for transportation funding in Allegheny County, that's fine too, but that issue is not particularly pressing.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:21 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,877,652 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by Copanut View Post
I don't believe many bars shut down due to it, but it makes for good talk radio fodder.
Yep. Of course we usually don't let the angry old drunk listening to talk radio dictate policy, but unfortunately we sorta locked in that outcome in 2010.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:42 PM
gg
 
Location: Pittsburgh
26,137 posts, read 25,783,846 times
Reputation: 17378
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
So according to the article, 40 out of about 2000 bars in Allegheny County between January 2008 and April 2010 closed down with delinquent drink taxes. Some undetermined number of those would likely have closed anyway (particularly given that the recession hit our area during that time--one delinquent bar owner reported revenues dropping in half in 2008), and conversely their closure presumably created additional demand to support other local bars.

So how many jobs were actually lost to the drink tax? I still don't know, but whatever number you could plausibly deduce from that article would be tiny in comparison to the number of people whose jobs depend in one way or another on PAT.
40 is a lot from a delinquent tax that was extremely high! Even if it is only 2 people working at each bar, that is another 80 jobs lost. Of course the number would be way higher than that. Not many bars have two people working there.

My point is more the ripple effects all this PAT bus mess has. It isn't fair to punish one industry for the problems at PAT. Why did they target them and why should bar/restaurants have to pay for PAT? Because politicians know that you can get away with punishing someone going out for a drink pretty easily. Problem is, jobs were lost and buildings are sitting with boards on them. Liquor licenses are cheaper now.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:45 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh area
9,912 posts, read 24,543,247 times
Reputation: 5162
All I know is, we'll all be punished quite severely if there's no transit. I don't really give a **** whether that means PAT is scrapped or not, but the more transit is cut back, the more we'll be punished with people losing their jobs and more traffic on the road, not to mention businesses that will be less interested in locating here.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:46 PM
gg
 
Location: Pittsburgh
26,137 posts, read 25,783,846 times
Reputation: 17378
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Yep. Of course we usually don't let the angry old drunk listening to talk radio dictate policy, but unfortunately we sorta locked in that outcome in 2010.
Doesn't matter if they did or didn't. It isn't fair to target one industry because PAT doesn't know how to operate. Completely unfair! Of course brian, you seem to be in favor of any new tax regardless the consequences. You would defend any new tax no matter what. It is so short sided. I don't feel you understand the climate that it creates at all. PAT is hurting business owners in our region. By them not knowing how to run a business, they have created yet another new tax. Sure it is glory days for you are your tax favoritism. You no doubt have more glory days than I in our region. Can't pay the PAT bills, create a new tax. Can't pay the pensions for city workers? Add more parking fees and almost sell public parking garages. You are no doubt in your glory!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 01-26-2012, 12:55 PM
 
6,596 posts, read 8,916,294 times
Reputation: 4673
Quote:
Originally Posted by h_curtis View Post
40 is a lot from a delinquent tax that was extremely high! Even if it is only 2 people working at each bar, that is another 80 jobs lost. Of course the number would be way higher than that. Not many bars have two people working there.

My point is more the ripple effects all this PAT bus mess has. It isn't fair to punish one industry for the problems at PAT. Why did they target them and why should bar/restaurants have to pay for PAT? Because politicians know that you can get away with punishing someone going out for a drink pretty easily. Problem is, jobs were lost and buildings are sitting with boards on them. Liquor licenses are cheaper now.
I do think you're correct that alcohol was chosen since it is easier to sell the public on sin taxes.

I also agree that PAT was certainly mismanaged for a long period of time. But I don't think it's correct to place all of the blame on PAT. Since Allegheny County is basically subsidizing the transportation funds of the rest of the state, doesn't it make some sense to also be mad at the state for disproportionately distributing the transportation funds? In other words, the need for supplemental funding to support PAT arose from both PAT's past mismanagement and from poor transportation funding strategy at the state level.

Ideally, Allegheny county would get its share of transportation funding returned to the county by the state, but that does not happen -- so it is hard to place 100% of the blame on PAT.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Pennsylvania > Pittsburgh

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top