How do you feel about a billionaire making significant contributions to a candidate and, when that candidate wins, being appointed to a job that will directly affect the well-being of poor and working people?
If you are one of the 80% of the people who voted Democratic in the last election, you are probably horrified. What do the members of the Philadelphia City Council think?
If the billionaire is Elon Musk and he recommends cutting taxes, claiming “trickle-down” economics will create jobs and build a middle class, many members of the Council are horrified. Since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, “trickle-down” economics has made the wealthy wealthier at the expense of the working class.
Will the people horrified by Musk and his recommended ‘trickle down’ proposals be horrified by Richard Vague, the Co-chair of the Tax Review Commission, doing the same and making the same recommendations?
Mr. Vague may not be as rich as Mr. Musk. And Mr. Vague has only given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, but the behaviors are the same. Mr. Vague gives 10s of thousands to help elect people to office. The candidates he gives money to appoint Mr. Vague to be the co-chair of the Tax Commission, which then recommends eliminating business taxes, not just for small businesses, but for every business. Including the business Mr. Vague owns.
Like Mr. Musk, we may never know how many millions of dollars the changes Mr. Vague is recommending will befall on him. Hall Monitor sent an email to the Tax Review Commission asking, in the name of transparency, how the changes recommended by the Commission will affect the net worth of those on the Commission.
The 15-member Commission includes four members appointed by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker; four by Council President Johnson; one by City Controller Christy Brady; and one by each of the six local Chambers of Commerce in Philadelphia. There are no low-income members, no advocates for people experiencing poverty, and no one representing a Public Worker Union.
When Mr. Vague was first appointed, it appeared that he would not recommend the trickle-down policies that have impoverished so many. In fact, on Mr. Vague’s web page, he writes,“Those who champion the trickle-down theory of economics are correct—except for one detail: it is debt that has been trickling down, not wealth.”
There were reasons to believe that with Mr. Vague’s business acumen and his stated dislike of trickle-down theory, he would develop strategies based on Philadelphia’s unique history, as reported by the Pew Charitable Trusts. “Pew analyzed roughly 921,000 tax returns filed by companies with the City’s Department of Revenue, grouping the companies by sector, size, years on the tax rolls, and other characteristics . . . Only around a quarter of the City’s businesses—35,500 a year on average—file a BIRT return and owe any BIRT tax., The median BIRT bill was $1,315 . . . Among the average of 35,500 businesses that were liable for the BIRT, practically all owed at least some gross receipts tax, sometimes a small amount. But only two-thirds also owed taxes on net income from their Philadelphia operations; the other third—around 12,300, on average—reported no net income on their tax returns because of deductible losses from prior years, current tax credits, or other reasons… Jump Start Philly, seeks to “attract new businesses” under two years of age by exempting them from all BIRT (and NPT) taxes as well as several fees…. Still, around 3,700 companies with two or fewer years of tax-filing history appear on the BIRT rolls with a median tax liability of $893 per year.
Those hopes were misplaced. Mr. Vague’s Commission does not mention any of the facts uncovered by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Like with the “chain saw cutting” orchestrated by Mr. Musk, Mr. Vague without including the facts presented by Pew in the report without seeking information regarding why Philadelphia’s population is growing at a slower rate than elsewhere (many believe if we invested more in our schools and rec centers more people would stay in the City) without looking at why the programs that eliminate taxes for startups are not working, recommends the President Trump tax plan. Eliminate business taxes and cut taxes for the wealthy.
The question for Philadelphia’s City Council, many of whom have condemned President Trump and Elon Musk’s trickle-down policies, is whether they will now vote to approve the same policies because one of their campaign contributors is making the recommendations.
If you would like to learn more about the Tax Review Commission’s Report, you can watch Philadelphia Hall Monitor’s weekly TV show on Comcast channel 66, Fios 29, this Wednesday.
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