Schools to Take Parking Tax for a Test Drive

Schools to Take Parking Tax for a Test Drive

We’ve written in previous Briefs and blog entries about the efforts of several municipalities in Allegheny County to levy a tax on supposedly free parking spaces where no transaction is carried out. Unlike the parking tax in Pittsburgh and other municipalities around the state where patrons pay for an on-street or garage space and the payment is subject to a tax, this new levy would place a flat fee on a business based on the number of spots they have.

Municipalities have taken this course of action under the presumption that parking is a taxable privilege under Act 511 and, since the Act does not prohibit taxing such a privilege (recall the same argument was made for the tuition tax) then they are free to do so. Someone wronged by the tax would have to bring a lawsuit to determine if the privilege is indeed taxable.

Well the stakes have been raised in the Mon Valley as the Steel Valley School District is prepared to discuss levying a $30 per space tax in the communities of Munhall, Homestead, and West Homestead-all three communities levy a similar tax-after exempting the first 30 spaces. Clearly, the logic for the District is either (1) since Act 511 applies to school districts as well as municipalities and nothing in the law prevents districts from having such a tax they should do it or (2) if no one has yet challenged whether this tax is permissible why leave money on the table?

Is there a limit to taxable privileges for local governments in PA? This instance might give us an a better answer to that still murky question.