With 30 co-sponsors, a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Costa would ban the imposition of the proposed education privilege tax in Pittsburgh and preclude any other municipality in Pennsylvania from enacting such a levy. The highly controversial so called "fair share tax" has enraged students and prompted university officials to mount a serious opposition campaign. And rightly so. As we have pointed out in Policy Briefs over recent weeks, this tax is one of the worst ideas ever to arise out of Pittsburgh government.
But seeing the virtual certainty of widespread adoption of such a tax across the state if it is implemented in Pittsburgh, the Legislature is moving to stop the ill-conceived and damaging tax before it advances any further. The Legislature will have to move quickly or it might have to make the bill retroactive. Pittsburgh could decide in a week or so to pass the bill and it could stand up to court challenge under current state law.
And that means state law is severely flawed. Indeed, Act 511, which permits the consideration of such nonsensical taxes, must be reformed to narrow the range of permissible local taxes. So rather than simply passing a bill to ban the tuition tax, the Legislature should amend the governing statute to spell out exactly what can be taxed by municipalities, eliminating "privilege" taxes not specifically permitted by the statute. And there should be few, if any, of those.