Michael Rappaport (scroll down to his letter) complains about Mayor Bloomberg's desire to impose a 2.75% city wage tax on commuters, on the basis that it is a whopping six times what the commuter tax was before it was consigned to oblivion.
Here in Philadelphia residents (moi) pay a whopping 4.54% and commuters pay 3.95%. While everyone agrees it should be lowered (though there isn't agreement on how to make up for the lost revenue), I'm not too sympathetic to the notion that the commuter tax is too high relative to the resident tax.
Interestingly, due to deductability of local taxes paid elsewhere, the Philadelphia tax basically prevents the surrounding municipalities to enact their own income taxes, and causes them to rely on property taxes instead.
