Philadelphia City Council wants to help healthy food with tax breaks

Philadelphia City Council’s Health and Human Services Committee has approved a bill to give a tax credit for businesses that make healthy food more widely available. 

George Matysik of Philabundance says his group serves 65,000 hungry people a week. If a business could get a tax break for helping his group, it could serve even more.

“At our site at Sixth and Lehigh alone, we provide over one million pounds of food a year,” Matyskik said. “We are also in the midst of launching our first full-scale grocery store in the food desert in the city of Chester, Delaware County, a concept we hope to replicate elsewhere in the future.”

Kevin Dow of the city’s Commerce Department says the credit could also help bring more money to Philadelphia if applicants end up adding jobs.

“That new job then pays a certain level of taxes,” Dow explained. Then the wage taxes, or so forth, could be theoretically a benefit of the tax credit program.”

City officials are not sure yet of how much the tax credit would return in new revenues.