Category: Other authors

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Why Pennsylvanians Should Reject Vouchers.

  By Diana Polson, Susan Spicka, Vouchers

Why Pennsylvania Should Reject Vouchers Susan Spicka, Education Voters PA Diana Polson, Keystone Research Center Marc Stier, Pennsylvania Policy Center Here we quickly summarize three major reasons why the General Assembly should not adopt a new voucher program. Voucher-funded schools do not offer educational choice for families and students. They use public dollars to support schools that engage in discrimination against many families and students. Voucher programs do not create educational “choice” for many families and students. Instead, voucher programs create the illusion of “choice” because private and religious voucher schools can—and do—engage in discrimination and refuse to enroll students, even if their family is eligible for a voucher. We have seen this in the tax-credit voucher programs already in place in Pennsylvania. In 2022–2023, the Pennsylvania legislature authorized the diversion of $340 million tax dollars out of the state treasury and into private and religious voucher schools through the Educational… Continue reading

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A Fair Share Tax for Pennsylvania–Updated for 2023

  By Diana Polson, Pennsylvania Budget, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Policy reports

By Mafc Stier and Diana Polson Pennsylvania has long suffered from a tax system that is both highly regressive, taking a larger share of income from low-income and moderate-income families than high-income families, and that does not raise sufficient revenue to meet the needs of Pennsylvanians. In the recent past, inadequate revenues have led to a structural budget deficit and will continue to do so in the near future. In turn, this has led to what we call a public investment deficit: a lack of funding for critical needs that undermines both opportunity and economic growth. Just one example of the public investment deficit in Pennsylvania is the recent decision by Commonwealth Court President Judge Jubelirer saying the state fails to meet its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” education to all K-12 school children. This paper puts forward the Fair Share Tax proposal, a major step toward… Continue reading

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The Fair Share Tax Proposal is Uniform Under the PA Constitution

  By Fair Share Tax, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports, Richard Feder, Taxation

By Richard Feder, J.D. For a number of years, the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has been proposing a replacement for Pennsylvania’s Personal Income Tax, which we call the Fair Share Tax. This plan is one of a number of ideas that include corporate tax reform and a natural gas severance tax and are designed to reverse the horrible inequities in our tax system that result in families with low and middle incomes paying taxes to state and local governments at about twice the rate of families in the top 1% of incomes. One of the questions raised about the Fair Share Tax is whether it meets the uniformity clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution. PBPC asked a noted Philadelphia lawyer with expertise in tax matters to do a thorough review of case law and other taxes in the state to answer that question. This is his answer in the form… Continue reading

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Blockbuster Investigation on Tax Avoidance Shows Clear Need for Bold Federal Tax Changes 

  By Billionaire tax, Erica Freeman, Federal Taxes, Other authors, Taxation

By Erica Freeman Last month’s ProPublica revelations identified what many experts, some lawmakers, and a majority of Americans already knew about the U.S. tax code: Policymakers over the past several decades have created a system that allows some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals to pay little or no federal income tax each year.   Ongoing negotiations over the next round of recovery legislation give Congress an opportunity to reverse course by closing loopholes and rolling back tax cuts for those at the top, thereby raising the revenue needed to strengthen the nation’s infrastructure and respond to economic and racial inequalities, according to a new report from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities.  Improving and expanding the taxation of wealth will bring more balance to the country’s tax code and raise the revenue we need to invest in a recovery that helps Pennsylvania and other states build a better future and an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy. Pennsylvania families contribute to… Continue reading

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Including Immigrants in Pandemic Relief is Essential for America’s Public Health and Economic Recovery

  By Immigration, Maisum Murtaza, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

by Maisum Murtaza and Marc Stier Originally published by KRC-PBPC here. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed numerous ways in which our political community is unfair to many people—and especially those with low incomes and people of color. But perhaps the most disturbing inequity is that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have been left out of much of the relief efforts so far. Both documented and undocumented immigrants play a critical role in the economy of our state and nation. Immigrants to America are our neighbors, our friends, our employees, and, in some cases, our employers. There are 28.3 million foreign-born residents in the labor force, of which 7.5 million are undocumented immigrants. More than 866,000 immigrants aged 16 or older live in Pennsylvania, of which over 582,000—including 91,000 undocumented immigrants—are part of our workforce. Almost 9% of Pennsylvania’s workforce was born abroad, and 1.4% of the workforce is here without documentation. Immigrants… Continue reading

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Calm Before the Storm: An Analysis of Governor Wolf’s Proposed Budget for 2020-21

  By Budget analysis, Diana Polson, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Stephen Herzenberg

Originally published by KRC-PBPC here, By Diana Polson, Marc Stier, and Stephen Herzenberg We were in the last two weeks of work on this analysis of the governor’s proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning on July 1, 2020, when the political and economic world in which we’d been living tilted on its axis. The coronavirus that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic was creating havoc in China, both to the health of the population and to the economy of the country. It is now clear that the United States is heading into a recession. We should expect that our economy, and indeed the whole world, will suffer for some time. A recession will have a severe impact on the budget of Pennsylvania with regard to both revenues and expenditure. Revenues will certainly decline. And expenditures for human services—especially for Medical Assistance (Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program), Unemployment Compensation, SNAP (formerly called… Continue reading

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Corporate Tax Cuts Since 2002 Cost PA $4.2B Annually

  By Corporate Taxes, Diana Polson, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Stephen Herzenberg, Taxation

By Stephen Herzenberg, Diana Polson, and Marc Stier Closing Delaware loophole, instituting worldwide combined reporting would level the playing field for small businesses and generate over $700 million a year to invest in PA communities This paper focuses on the details of one part of this story: the cuts in corporate taxes in Pennsylvania since 2002 that have reduced revenues by what is now $4.2 billion per year and have created a tax system that is among the most unfair in the country.   Pennsylvania’s tax–cutting, shaped by the corporate-sponsored narrative, has taken a variety of forms. Under both Republican and Democratic governors, we have entirely eliminated one of our two major taxes on corporations, the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax (CSFT). We have also allowed businesses to lower their reported profits subject to the largest remaining corporate tax—the Corporate Net Income (CNI) tax. And we have continued to give multi-state corporations free rein to cook their books and exploit corporate tax loopholes to their reported income subject to the CNI. The result is that 73% of corporations that do business in Pennsylvania… Continue reading

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Effects of a Minimum Wage Increase on Social Safety Net

  By Diana Polson

Published at KRC-PBPC here. By Marc Stier and Diana Polson INCREASED INCOME FROM RAISING MINIMUM WAGE IS GREATER, AND IN MOST CASES, FAR GREATER THAN THE LOSS IN BENEFITS AND NEW TAXES PAID HARRISBURG—As Pennsylvania seriously considers raising the minimum wage for the first time in over a decade (and as the U.S. House prepares to vote on a bill to increase the minimum wage federally), concerns have been raised that workers receiving a higher wage also will face a “benefits cliff.” A benefits cliff occurs when individuals get a wage increase but the social benefits they lose and the taxes they pay increase more than their additional earnings, resulting in an overall reduction in a family’s standard of living. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center today released two policy briefs examining the effects of a minimum wage increase to $15/hr in Pennsylvania. One brief examines a wage increase when… Continue reading

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  By John Neurohr, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Statements

With John Neurohr Originally published by KRC-PBPC. HARRISBURG—PA Budget and Policy Center director Marc Stier made the following statement in response to a press release sent out today by the Pennsylvania Republican Party criticizing a Budget Day of Action and rally/press conference in Harrisburg today in support of raising the state minimum wage: “The PA Republican Party is criticizing the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center and the We The People campaign for offering citizens a bus trip or a gift card to pay for their gas to make the trip to Harrisburg to advocate for a raise in the minimum wage. “Somehow in their effort to criticize us for helping Pennsylvanians who are taking a day off—in many cases from minimum wage jobs—to exercise their rights as citizens, they have forgotten that the business community that opposes raising the minimum wage has paid lobbyists who no doubt get their mileage… Continue reading