Should Pittsburgh tax non-residents who work in the city? (Philadelphia: sales, buy)

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

If we are going to go this route (charging taxes to cover infrastructure), why not just tax commuters for every township/borough they drive through on the way? Maybe toll all of these roads. I just don't buy the infrastructure argument. What about the city residents who work outside of town? How do we handle these cases? Consolidation is probably the answer but I don't see it happening any time in my lifetime.

[Aqua Teen Carl]

More taxes are definitely not the answer. Removal of corrupt politicians is. Honestly at this point I don't think it would matter who we would elect, Democrat or Republican as both are equally as corrupt just in different ways.

Also, with the talks in other threads about getting people to move back into the city the idea of "hey we're going to tax you more for just working here" is very off putting for people who may be thinking about moving to the city to be closer to work.

[gg]

Sure why not have a NEW TAX!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what we need, more new taxes. Lets just tax every breath you take and be done with it.

How about this. Cut spending and stop overpaying people.

[hey man_its me]

ha...
3.4985% wage tax for non-residents. Another reason to never move to that crappy corner of the state to try and find a job.

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Sure why not have a NEW TAX!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what we need, more new taxes. Lets just tax every breath you take and be done with it.

How about this. Cut spending and stop overpaying people.

Or maybe we can stop sending ambulances and firetrucks out to suburbanites who come to visit and get in trouble.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Love2Golf09

Pittsburghers created their financial mess, not people from the suburbs.

This is a good example of how people get silly about jurisdictions.

The City's legacy costs are really mostly the result of decisions made many, many years ago. As a result, many current residents of Pittsburgh had nothing in particular to do with any of that. Conversely, there are people living in the suburbs who were actually voting residents of the City at that time.

In short, people do things, not jurisdictions. And the people in these jurisdictions now are not the same as the people in these jurisdictions at the relevant times.

[BrianTH]

Obviously this is going to degrade into another pointless bout of name-calling, but for the record:

State law sharply limits the options available to PA cities with large legacy costs. In fact, certain programs actually punish cities for attempting to moderate their costs. That is not to say there is nothing the City could be doing to improve its efficiency or deal better with its legacy costs--there are always things that can be done.

But once again, there isn't a magic button available which the City can push and make all its legacy costs go away, in large part because the state won't let the City have such a button.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

If they were ever to deem a tax necessary, the lesser evil would probably be some sort of commuter/congestion tax. Refund the flat tax to those individuals who use public transportation of a regular basis. Use a large portion of this tax to help fund PAT. I'd hope this would only be done after PAT went through some serious reform, which will probably not be happening anytime soon.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Sure why not have a NEW TAX!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what we need, more new taxes. Lets just tax every breath you take and be done with it.

How about this. Cut spending and stop overpaying people.

It depends how you look at it and how it exactly it would be implemented. Say the city lowers the resident's taxes at the same time that they impose a tax on non-residents. They could do this in such a way that they receive the same amount of tax revenue, but the tax burden would be spread out more fairly. Though to be honest, I think the political backlash would not be worth it to most politicians if they weren't also bringing in more revenue to the city, so I think it is unlikely that resident's tax rates would be cut if this were implemented.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily advocating a commuter tax like this. But, I think it is interesting that I never even hear the option discussed, even though it could be a very quick fix for the city's financial troubles.

[gg]

Originally Posted by SammyKhalifa

Or maybe we can stop sending ambulances and firetrucks out to suburbanites who come to visit and get in trouble.

We have volunteers for fire. Don't know about ambulance, but I believe if you have to be picked up in one you have to pay the fee, which will no doubt be insanely high because the cost shifting that would take place because the tons of inner city people that are always getting shot and have no insurance to pay anything.

I think there is enough cost shifting going on. My son's lunch is $2 a day because we have to chip in for the poor kids. Everything the middle class does is shifted to them because the rich don't pay taxes either. It is getting old.

For anyone that even asks, "I wonder if we should have a new tax for...? Here is an idea. Take your idea and stick it.