The Philadelphia Tax System

The United States system of support for poor families, active duty military members, and public education are heavily subsidized via taxation. Tax policy and reform often impact the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The city’s government must increase taxpayers’ wages while simultaneously enforcing tax policies that support social services programs. Philadelphia’s income tax policy is recurrently reformed in hopes of simplifying the tax system. This is a daunting task, however, because the tax system is a deep and complex decades-old code (Hyman, 2014). And due to the complexity of said tax code, the results are losses in efficiency. The Philadelphia taxpayer must, then, weigh their taxation against the use of their tax dollars toward

The taxation directly helps Philadelphia’s children with their public education and attendant resources. Business distributors have to pay sweetened beverages directly to city. Public education does not have enough state and federal budgets that will cover children’s lunches, after school programs, tutoring services, textbooks, etc. As a result, charter schools are now more prevalent in Philadelphia than before, and sums parents are willing to pay for a richer educational experience chock-full of resources for their children. That said, however, Philadelphia stands as the poorest big city with the worst poverty in the United States. Hence, while some parents have the means to send their children to charter schools, many parents cannot afford that same privilege. Moreover, many public schools have closed throughout the city, which is devastating to both parents and their children in the area. This degenerative educational situation drove the city to create the Sugary Beverage Tax, which was recently passed and went into effect on January 1st, 2017. The Sugary Beverage Tax imposes on any non-alcoholic beverage, syrup, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, and sodas (City of Philadelphia, 2016). The taxation revenue comes from businesses within the city and is designed to help fund education. Specifically, the Sugary Beverage Tax will impose a 1.5 cents per ounce

By boosting the employment and earnings of working families, the EITC program advances the amount of tax refunds they will receive each year. The EITC is the most successful program in Philadelphia, as it is in other major cities across the United States. Thus, the EITC greatly reduces poverty for working families compared to military families who have extra privileges within the tax system. It therefore follows, then, that poor and working-class families will be able to keep their children out of poverty if public education improves—that is, moving the education system away from charter schools or private schools. The impoverished and working-class families in question would, then, be able to move above the poverty level, and advance in their educational achievements, the effects of which would be seen in the children and felt throughout the city. Of course, reducing poverty in Philadelphia stands easier said than done at this moment, as the majority of low-wage residents are struggling with their income expenditures compared to the high-income taxpayers. The reduction of inequality by boosting the after-tax income is common in the low-income taxpayers’