Apr 14, 2018 3 min read

If you voted in the early ’70s and plan to vote May 15 for candidates in the governor, state Senate and House races, chances are a familiar campaign promise will be aired: “Vote for me; I will get rid of the property tax.” That was a promise in 1972 made by every candidate since. They know we are pleading for this tax relief for various reasons.

Four hundred years ago, our first government felt a man’s land and private holdings should be taxed to provide revenue for state spending. What hurts the Pennsylvania taxpayer today, however, is we have been promised a reform of the tax law because it has turned to be unfair by relying on payment from people not receiving supported services. A reform, proposed in 1973 at a meeting by various legislators in Moon Township, specifically called eliminating the real estate tax and increasing the earned income tax rate of 1 percent. Attending the meeting as a local wage tax collector, I presented the fact that earnings and profits are an unstable base from year to year. People die, relocate, retire, become unemployed or go on disability. My presentation showed that in one block of 13 homes in my township, one person was employed while the remaining property owners were retired. These facts hold true today. Is it fair to expect our working public to stand alone in supporting local services? If memory serves me well, the last tax reform proposal only supported the elimination of school property tax, not municipal or county taxes.

The legislators and governors have been playing with the issue of taxation since World War II. No one seemed to oppose paying tax on real estate. In the late ’40s, certain municipalities were given the right to impose a wage tax on all people employed within their community. This requirement changed a couple years later when the wage tax was permitted to be used in every municipality on their residents no matter where they worked. The 1 percent wage tax was enjoyed only by the municipality until the law changed by the sixties, when school districts were entitled to ½ percent of the annual collections. Around the same time, the municipality was given the right to impose another tax on all people employed within their municipal boundary, called the Occupational Privilege Tax, a $10-a-year fee. By the mid-’60s, the school district was permitted to request half of those tax revenues. (This tax is now known as EMT and is $50 a year.) All these changes came about when the state was making some changes for their own purpose by imposing the state tax on gross earnings. Considering the federal government has always had the opportunity to tax the same gross earnings, all taxes on income the worker is obligated to pay in Pennsylvania results in tax on tax.

On May 15, we are expected to bury the past and go forward in thought that new faces will have experience and ability to tax reform back on the table. Do not feed us the old promise, “Vote me in and I will reform the property tax,” if you have no workable solution.

Joann Diesel

Washington

The letter-writer is a former wage tax collector.