People of Philadelphia Beware:You May Owe Taxes You Had No Idea About

I did an article a little while back about the "blogger tax". This had too many differentials to actually seem a realistic tax law to pass. Now people who were earning a second income to support their families through hard times are now being hit with tax notices, some only had made a mere $2,000 and are being charged $10,000. This seems outlandish. Instead of urging people to do their best by not relying on state help by taking on small side jobs are now finding out it was not worth the effort, literally.

Philadelphia's Business-Privilege Tax

There really is so much to try to understand here, the person typically taking on this second job or form of income really did not understand this tax and are now paying heavily. The cases that I saw examples of, the person had reported this income on their tax returns so felt they had done what they were supposed to do tax-wise. All the present Philadelphia's Business Privilege Tax is doing now is scaring people away from doing business in Philadelphia. In times like these, I would think it would be important to stimulate the economy in Philadelphia by making it an attractive place to do business.

What Needs To Be Done To Stop This

City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilman Bill Green have introduced legislation for tax reform. They understand the need to be able to work harder to support yourself and your family without fear of the "tax man". In their legislation, they propose that the business privilege tax be used in cases where the business makes $100,00 or more. This seems a little high for me. I feel even $25,000 would be fine. It just seems like a waste of taxpayers money to spend time finding these people making $2,000 a year and then going after them. Then that person owes an outrageous amount of money that they'll probably never be able to come up with to begin with. Our tax money would be better spent going after the people making a substantial income from their "business". I say this because most likely, the person making that kind of money do know the laws or have accountants that tell them the laws but they choose to ignore it. These are the people we need to find and have pay up.

Tax evasion at $100,000, $200,000 and so on is definitely something that needs to be taken care of ASAP. However, the working family who earned $2,000 delivering newspapers who reported this income to the IRS needn't be harassed and probably left with a bad mark on their name forever merely because they were trying to do the right thing.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/ronnie_polaneczky/20101019_Ronnie_Polaneczky_.html
personal opinion