Head Tax

The House voted 405-15 yesterday to give local airport authorities the power to levy up to a $3 head tax on air travelers. Shortly before approving the bill, members voted 252-171 to reject an amendment by Rep. Douglas Bosco (D., Calif.) that would have killed the head tax and instead use the $7 billion surplus in the federal aviation trust fund to finance airport improvements. The size of the House vote put additional pressure on the Senate to act on the bill this year. If the Senate put off a vote until next year, the House also would have to vote on the bill again.

The Radnor Township school board, seeking new revenues to soften a 14 percent increase in its 1992-93 budget, adopted a motion Tuesday night for a $15 per-capita tax on residents 18 and older. The new levy, known as a head tax, is expected to raise close to $300,000 and would chip nearly 4 mills off the current proposed millage increase of 39.1 mills. This would adjust the tax rate increase to about 12 percent. The board's 8-0 vote for the head tax came in the face of strong opposition by the township commissioners.

A $15 head tax and a restructured teacher contract that, combined, will help reduce spending by about $700,000 from the amount that had been proposed for next school year were approved Tuesday night by the Radnor Township school board. The head, or per capita, tax will be imposed on all residents 18 years and older, including out-of-town college students who register to vote in the township. The tax is expected to net about $300,000 and reduce the real estate millage by more than 4 mills from the approved amount.

Delaware County is the willing beneficiary of $625,613 in state-grant money for a motorcycle-safety training program whose funding has more than doubled since last year. The grant, which comes from a head tax of $2 a year on motorcycle users in the state, is up from the $282,145 the county received in 1992. The County Council voted Tuesday to continue administering the program. A sweetener in the deal is that the county gets to use a portion of the grant - in this case, $56,864 - as an overhead allowance.

Already subject to one of the largest and most confusing assortment of local levies in the nation, Pennsylvanians by the hundreds of thousands are about to find yet another tax nibbling at their paychecks. The name of this one is the Emergency and Municipal Services Tax, and it was conceived in the state legislation that rescued Pittsburgh from insolvency in late November. In the bailout process, lawmakers gave Pennsylvania's 2,500 municipalities the same gift they bestowed on Steel Town: the option of extracting a flat tax of up to $52 annually from the wages of everyone - CEO and burger flipper alike - who works in the community.

Their sentiments split, Rockledge residents grappled at a hearing this week with the idea of an earned-income tax next year. "You might have to bear a burden," resident Charles McKee said at the hearing Monday night. "But that's a burden you pay to live. " Once the tax is enacted, it won't go away, countered resident Jim Schu. By the end of the month, the Borough Council must decide if the tax will be in effect next year. With the borough facing a diminishing tax base, a 0.5 percent earned-income tax could raise an additional $40,000 for the municipality in its first year of collection.

The Warrington supervisors have repealed the township's 31-year-old per capita tax, which required all residents 21 years and older to pay the township $5 annually. As expected, the board voted 5-0 to eliminate the head tax during a meeting Tuesday. The board had discussed repealing the tax during 1991 budget talks in the fall, according to Township Manager Stanley Gawel. "It was a nuisance tax and was very hard to collect," he said, adding that he suggested dropping it because of higher-than-expected revenues from the township's 0.50 percent earned-income tax. Under the 1991 budget, real estate taxes remained steady at 25.1 mills because of an estimated $735,000 budget surplus in 1990.

The Warrington supervisors have repealed the township's 31-year-old per capita tax, which required all residents 21 years and older to pay the township $5 annually. As expected, the board voted 5-0 to eliminate the head tax during a meeting Tuesday. The board had discussed repealing the tax during 1991 budget talks in the fall, according to Township Manager Stanley Gawel. "It was a nuisance tax and was very hard to collect," he said, adding that he suggested dropping it because of higher-than-expected revenues from the township's 0.50 percent earned-income tax. Under the 1991 budget, real estate taxes remained steady at 25.1 mills because of an estimated $735,000 budget surplus in 1990.

The Octorara Area School District is studying the effect that an increase in real estate taxes for schools would have on district residents, although there are no immediate plans to change the per capita school tax. On Monday night, district Superintendent Richard P. McAdams presented the school board with an analysis of the district's per capita school tax compared with what taxpayers would pay if real estate taxes supported the school district....

About 40 Easttown residents, armed with notebooks and questions, attended a Board of Supervisors meeting to protest the possibility of increased taxes in 1991. Easttown officials have projected a deficit for next year. To balance the budget, the supervisors Monday night said they were considering adopting a temporary 1 percent income tax. "I have never personally liked an income tax," said Anthony Minisi, the chairman of the supervisors. "I've been opposed to it for the same reasons everyone else has. But there's no other course to follow, unless we eliminate the police force or maintenance department, which means no police protection and no filling of potholes.

IN YOUR Aug. 31 editorial "Perzel's Plea, and Ours," you wrote, "With six Bonusgate charges against him, State Rep. Bill DeWeese handily won re-election. " It's a factual inaccuracy - and a sad testament to the standing of the Fourth Estate - to say that former Republican attorney general (and now Gov.) Tom Corbett charged me in connection with legislative bonuses. The record shows he clearly did not. As Democratic majority leader, the extent of my involvement with Bonusgate was 35 months of cooperation with Corbett's investigation.

As many as 300,000 workers in the Philadelphia suburbs are about to find something extra in their pay: a new tax. This year, at least 35 communities in Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and Delaware Counties are seizing the first opportunity to levy the Emergency and Municipal Services Tax - an annual maximum of $52 - on nearly everyone employed there. It will replace the old Occupational Privilege Tax, which had held steady at a modest $10 for the last 40 years. State lawmakers enacted the new tax in November when they rescued Pittsburgh from insolvency by allowing the city to withhold the increased head tax from every paycheck earned in the city.

Already subject to one of the largest and most confusing assortment of local levies in the nation, Pennsylvanians by the hundreds of thousands are about to find yet another tax nibbling at their paychecks. The name of this one is the Emergency and Municipal Services Tax, and it was conceived in the state legislation that rescued Pittsburgh from insolvency in late November. In the bailout process, lawmakers gave Pennsylvania's 2,500 municipalities the same gift they bestowed on Steel Town: the option of extracting a flat tax of up to $52 annually from the wages of everyone - CEO and burger flipper alike - who works in the community.

The chairman of the city commission that recommended a package of tax cuts last fall told a City Council hearing yesterday that he now disagreed with some of the proposals. Edward Schwartz, who chaired the city's Tax Reform Commission, told Council that Philadelphia's budget predicament made it unwise to lock in the long-term tax cuts featured in the commission's report. "I'm saying explicitly that locking us into a 10-year timetable is something we never discussed, and I don't favor," Schwartz said.

Mayor Street said he is considering the sale of city assets such as the airport or the Philadelphia Gas Works to help stock the $500 million economic-development fund that is the major initiative of his second term. "I will look at the potential sale of all the assets the city has," Street said yesterday during a meeting with the Inquirer Editorial Board. "We'll look at a range of things. " The mayor did not list the properties that might be sold to investors to raise cash for the development fund.

Evesham Township, where I've lived very happily for 30 years, owns a golf course that is about $10 million in the red. To bail out the Indian Spring Country Club, the Township Council is studying raising municipal taxes. At the same time, Evesham is making plans to spend a mere pittance - $220,000 - to build a skateboard park so that kids who don't partake of the township's baseball fields, soccer fields, football fields, street hockey rinks, tennis courts (and, oh, yes, golf course)

Elizabeth Grubb did not realize that failing to pay a tax worth about the price of a movie ticket would result in her being treated as an outlaw. In a town this small, however, where the weekly newsletter addresses people by their first names, telling the neighbors, it seems, is a good way to get everybody to pay their fair share. In bold, black letters on the door of borough hall are listed the names of last year's 90 tax delinquents. "I'm catching up with it," Grubb said, adding that she was more concerned about mailing her electric bill on time - and having heat - than she was about public humiliation.

Attention, Upper Darby residents: When a letter from Cole Layer Trumble arrives in your mailbox in the next few days, sit down, take a deep breath, look at the number that appears after the dollar sign, and ask yourself one question: "Could I sell my house for this amount?" You are on the front lines of Delaware County's first-ever county-wide reassessment. (And if all went right, your answer should be yes.) Starting today, notices are being mailed to let people know the new values assigned to their houses for tax purposes.

Imagine that: township officials axing a $10 tax to save money. Next week, the Board of Supervisors expect to do just that by scrapping the per-capita tax, levied on residents 18 and older. This will not affect the property tax rate, which remained stable, because the countywide reassessment increased the assessed value of homes in the township by 10 percent. Instead, the trash collection fee will jump by $20 next year to cover the loss in revenue. It costs more, Whitemarsh officials found, to collect the head tax, often characterized as a nuisance, than any of its other tax revenue.

Taxes on air travel will go up by about $1 billion a year under the budget agreement detailed yesterday. But the price increases on many tickets are likely to be so small that travelers will barely notice them, analysts say. Costs of domestic tickets may actually go down for some business travelers. That's because the basic federal tax on air travel will be reduced in stages during the next five years from 10 percent to 7.5 percent. But a fee, increasing gradually to $3 during the same period, is being added for each leg of a flight.