Tax

HARRISBURG - Another member of Gov. Corbett's cabinet is on his way out. Education Secretary Ron Tomalis is looking for another job and does not intend to stay past summer as Corbett's education czar, two senior administration officials have told The Inquirer on condition of anonymity. An official timetable has yet to be set for his exit, but the sources said Tomalis would likely stay in his $149,804 job until after the July 1 deadline for getting a state budget passed and signed into law. He would become the fifth cabinet member to leave since Corbett took office in January 2011.

With a first-year record like Gov. Corbett's, it's a good thing he still has three more years to go. Or maybe not. Another three years could give Corbett time to make some progress, at least, toward pressing issues facing the state - like fixing roads and bridges, or making natural-gas drillers pay their fair share. There even may be time to do something about handgun violence that tragically ends hundreds of Pennsylvanians' lives annually (were the governor not such a gun-rights stalwart)

  There's budget trouble in Medford, an affluent Norman Rockwell suburb with two newly renovated fire halls, respected schools, and a variety of lush parks. Despite the recent economic turmoil and the township's apparently insatiable demand for amenities, its tax rate stayed flat from 2006 to 2010 and went up only slightly last year. And that is precisely why the Burlington County community now faces a financial emergency, say leaders of the five-member, all-Republican Town Council and a chorus of budget experts.

MAYOR NUTTER is constantly crying poor and trying to charge taxpayers more fees or provide fewer services. His new plan is to charge a weekly trash fee to help the city raise needed funds. Then, in the same day's paper is an article on Nutter appointing a former city official to a position heading the Office of Economic Opportunity. In plain English, this position is aimed at getting 25 percent of all city contracts to go to minority- or female-owned businesses. But the real kicker is that her salary will be $135,000.

For a country that's short of cash and repelled by Wall Street greed, this proposal sounds like a winner: Tax the sale of stocks and bonds. At a penny for every $2 worth of securities, such a levy would bring in about $12 billion a year. And it would fall most heavily on the fast-buck artists who buy and sell securities for speculative gain, not long-term investment. Or so the pitch goes. Unfortunately, even though the tax sounds small, it probably would jolt financial markets.

Facing what some see as the most dire funding crisis in decades, school districts across the region are proposing cuts that could drastically reshape their programs and communities. In district after district, officials have proposed budgets notable for what's missing: busing, kindergarten, athletics, librarians, languages, gym classes. Thousands of area school employees are likely to lose jobs, even as taxes in their districts rise. "This is unlike anything we've seen in the last 50 years," said Lou DeVlieger, superintendent of Upper Darby School District, which plans to cut 47 jobs, draw $4 million from reserves, and raise taxes 2.7 percent.

MANY have debated the mayor's proposed sugar-sweetened beverage tax, but it would be illegal. Pennsylvania law specifically bans the city from taxing an item that the state already taxes. As anyone who's picked up a six-pack of soda in a supermarket knows, Pennsylvania taxes ALL soft drinks at 6 percent, sugar sweetened or not. Like the state sales tax, the proposed sugar tax would fall on the consumer. If this tax were enacted, we'd pay separate taxes on the same item. In fact, the city designed this tax to fall on the consumer, claiming the goal is to change buying behavior.

Narberth's 1990 operating budget of about $1.5 million will require no tax increase after all. According to borough manager William Martin, the 3.28-mill tax increase that had been proposed was offset by unanticipated revenue, including a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pick up 75 percent of the $80,000 estimated cost of renovating and building an addition to the borough library. Martin said the borough also received about $80,000 not originally figured into the proposed 1990 budget in reimbursement for compensation pay for a police officer out of work since 1984.

EVERY potential voter has heard by now that, as president, Barack Obama is going to give a middle-class tax cut and tax subsidies to 95 percent of Americans. These will be funded by income-tax increases on the country's richest 5 percent, in addition to hikes on the capital-gains tax, dividends tax, death tax, payroll tax and windfall-profits tax. You'd think that if 95 percent of Americans would save (or possibly make) money from electing Obama, he would be polling at 95 percent.

A day after Sen. Bob Dole was said to be poised to unveil a dramatic package of measures to cut and simplify taxes, the Republican presidential candidate courted blue-collar, swing voters in the battleground state of New Jersey. "I think he is going to do something very bold," magazine publisher Steve Forbes, a former Dole rival and a leading proponent of the flat tax, said over the weekend on NBC's "Meet the Press. " During the primary campaign, Forbes had run advertisements criticizing Dole's past votes for higher taxes and his lack of a tax reform plan.

There's nothing like crusading politicians who want to boost taxes on drinkers and smokers to unite Philadelphia bar owners against City Hall. "What we have here is the perfect storm," moaned John Longacre, owner of American Sardine Bar at 18th and Federal Streets and head of the Philadelphia Licensed Beverage Association, whose activity rises and falls in rough correlation with the perceived municipal threat to owners' income. Longacre was responding to City Council President Darrell L. Clarke's proposal, officially endorsed by Mayor Nutter on Wednesday, to boost the city's liquor-by-the-drink tax to 15 cents per dollar from 10 cents, and Nutter's new plan to slap a $2-a-pack tax atop the $6 or so it now costs Philadelphia smokers to score a pack of Marlboros.

To raise money for the desperate Philadelphia School District, Mayor Nutter proposed Wednesday to tax cigarettes at $2 a pack and raise the city's liquor-by-the-drink tax from 10 percent to 15 percent. Alongside School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. and others at City Hall, Nutter also pledged to improve city tax collections. The mayor estimated that his plan would raise an additional $95 million for schools in 2013-14 and $135 million in the second year. Nutter stressed that the money would benefit not only students enrolled in district schools but those who attend the 84 taxpayer-funded charter schools in the city.

At Brownie's Irish Pub in Old City during Wednesday's happy hour, bartender Robert McDevitt was not happy to hear about the city's new drink-tax proposal. "I'm going to be losing twice," he said, fearing both a loss of business where he works and higher prices when he goes out to other establishments. Stephen Hopson, owner of Brownie's, said it was unfair for businesses like his to be targeted for new taxes. "The suburbs will be 15 percent cheaper," he said. Hopson predicted that some bars would close.

IF MAYOR NUTTER gets his way, smokers and drinkers could be forking up some big dough in city taxes - but not all of them are fuming about it. Sonny Deniro, a server at Jon's Bar & Grille at 3rd and South, said he opposed the new sin taxes - until he found out the money would go to the schools. City schools "need help," said Deniro, 27, a parent of a child who hasn't entered school yet. "They should raise it up even more. " Nutter proposed two new taxes yesterday - a $2-per-pack cigarette tax and a 5 percentage-point increase in the city's "liquor-by-the-drink" tax - to raise $67 million for the financially beleaguered Philadelphia School District.

Brick-and-mortar retailers won a well-deserved and long-overdue victory last week when the Senate passed a bill requiring their online counterparts to collect state sales taxes. As consumers have turned increasingly to the Web to make purchases over the last decade, conventional retailers have been put at an unfair disadvantage. They have to collect state sales taxes, while most Internet retailers don't. That hands online retailers a virtual discount equivalent to the cost of the sales tax. In New Jersey, the tax is 7 percent; in Pennsylvania, it's 6 percent.

I AM TIRED of hearing legislators crying "no new taxes. " Why? What's wrong about tax increases? Would you rather have new and more efficient roads and bridges, or no new taxes? Would you rather have a new and more efficient infrastructure, or no new taxes? Would you rather have a functioning and more efficient school system, or no new taxes? I could go on and on, but these are just a few serious problems that need to be addressed now. If these can't happen unless taxes are raised, then I say raise the taxes.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

TRENTON - Assembly Democrats and a cabinet official bickered Thursday over whether the Republican governor's policies have produced real property tax relief and whether the administration has given sufficient guidance to towns on spending for affordable housing projects. Richard Constable, commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, told the Assembly Budget Committee that Gov. Christie's reforms, including changes to pensions and benefits and an annual 2 percent cap, are helping to slow property-tax increases.

IF THE school district doesn't receive additional funding and operates next year under an austerity plan, the resulting scenario would devastate education for the children of the city, Mayor Nutter asserted yesterday. The district cuts essentially would mean "buildings that are open and people who are there," Nutter said. "But it is not an educational opportunity. " Schools would go without assistant principals, guidance counselors and extracurricular activities, Nutter said to students and staff at Jackson School in South Philadelphia.

TRENTON - An Assembly panel has moved forward with measures to create a constitutional amendment that would double the income limit for New Jersey seniors and disabled people to qualify for a property tax rebate. The measures approved Monday by the Appropriations Committee call for raising the income eligibility from $10,000 to $20,000, before Social Security benefits. It now goes before the full Assembly, though a hearing date has not yet been scheduled. If approved by voters, the amendment would make an additional 100,000 taxpayers eligible for an annual $250 rebate.