Nutter vs. Green, sort of

    City Council chambers will host a 15-round bout today over an ambitious plan to change the way the city of Philadelphia taxes businesses.

    Council freshmen Bill Green and Maria Quinones Sanchez have spent a year developing their proposal to reverse the 15-year course the city’s been on to reduce the city’s gross receipts tax on businesses.

    This can get so wonky your head hurts, but their basic idea is that the city’s current emphasis on taxing profits rather than sales allows some big national chains to evade city taxes.

    And they think the current structure weighs heavily on knowledge-based companies, like law firms and software designers. So they’d tax sales rather than profits.

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    The Nutter administration sees it differently, and the policy difference is heightened by political rivalry. Green hasn’t ruled out running against Nutter next year.

    Nutter won’t be at the Council hearing for testimony on the Green-Sanchez proposal, but many will speak for him, and  business owners on both sides of the issue will air their views.

    I’ll be there, and try to make sense of it for you.

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