In Rough Economy, Nutter Scales Back Tax Cuts

May 14th, 2008, posted by Greg Palmer

A faltering real estate market and some overly optimistic budgeting has led Mayor Nutter to slightly scale back his tax-cutting plans, thus breaking several campaign promises.

The revised five-year financial plan, which is to be presented to City Council today, includes a total of $155.8 million less in wage- and business-tax cuts than Nutter had proposed in February, senior administration officials said.

Though taxes will still be trimmed, the new goals are not as aggressive as those Nutter has long championed.

As a mayoral candidate, Nutter pledged to eliminate the gross-receipts portion of the business-privilege tax within seven years. He still plans to kill that tax, but the administration now says it will take a full decade.

And instead of lowering the resident wage tax from its current rate of 4.2 percent to 3.5 percent by 2013, Nutter now plans to trim it to 3.6 percent.

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Philadelphia

No Democrat (except

On May 14th, 2008 Anonymous said:

No Democrat (except Kennedy) ever cuts the taxes they’re addicted to.
If they can’t plunder their neighbors, they might have to get jobs.

I laugh when I read these comments. Democrats rarely run on a tax cut position. On the other hand, our Republican friends swear by lowering taxes, if not eliminating them altogether, yet they never seem to get around to it.

Not surprised at all

On May 16th, 2008 phillydem said:

Street got plenty of grief for saying that the budget wouldn’t allow for anything but small, incremental cuts. Nutter essentially ran on the old “supply side” voodoo favored by the Chamber of Commerce and its allies. Everyone in Philadelphia with a functioning brain knew that to cut taxes they way Nutter wanted would be fiscally irresponsible and not realistically doable. I guess I’ll give Nutter credit for recognizing he must retreat from his campaign promises, but he should have known better from the beginning.