Pew report finds Philly gives the most business tax incentives

Philadelphia imposes one of the nation’s highest tax burdens on businesses, according to a new report.

To help make the medicine go down, Philly offers a little sugar: the most business tax incentives and exemptions of any of the 30 largest U.S. cities.

These range from the very large, such as the Keystone Opportunity Zone program and the 10-year tax abatement program, to the small and obscure, including a very old tax exemption for bookbinders (the occupation, not the restaurant).  Cumulatively, these breaks yield a million dollars of tax reductions each year, on average, for each business. 

A newly released Pew Trusts report, Philadelphia Business Taxes: Incentives and Exemptions, evaluates the data, with a mind toward offering steps that Philadelphia and other cities can take to best evaluate their overall tax policies.  The editor of the study, Tom Ginsburg joined NewsWorks Tonight host Dave Heller to review the findings.