Debating business taxes at Phila. City Council

A marathon hearing will resume in Philadelphia City Council today over a proposal to overhaul business taxes in the city.  Mayor Nutter’s team is expected to tell Council members the change is a bad idea.Council members Bill Green and Maria Quinones Sanchez have worked for more than a year on their plan to eliminate city taxes on business profits, and instead focus on taxing sales within the city.  Sanchez says the current system discourages knowledge-based companies from staying here, because they pay taxes on profits they make from work around the country.  And she says big national retailers here are evading the current tax on profits.”They claim they make no money here, and more importantly they don’t pay their fair share of taxes,” Sanchez said. .In prepared testimony he’s to deliver today, Nutter’s finance director Rob Dubow team says the proposal will favor a handful of big law firms while penalizing some of the city’s biggest employers. And he says it will cost the cash-starved city 23 million dollars a year.

Green and Sanchez say they can adjust the rate of the tax on sales to make up any revenue loss.