Why does cable TV get a free pass for the corporate welfare sales tax exemption they get? I follow almost every single State Rep. on Facebook. When you do that you quickly see that a lot of the “foot soldier” reps post the same identical things verbatim at the same exact time. This weeks ‘theme of the week’ post includes this:
“During his budget address today, Gov. Tom Wolf asked to add sales tax to your basic cable TV bill , movie theater ticket purchases and digital downloads.”
This excerpt post was from Rep. Hahn’s page. But as I said it’s posted virtually verbatim on at least 25 state Rep’s walls. Naturally, it spurred lots of anger. Very effective politically. But again, I ask why does cable get the corporate welfare pass? Cable companies enjoy an totally arbitrary sales tax exception that steals a quarter of a billion dollars from taxpayers a year.
I think they get the pass because it fits nicely into a populist political narrative. Very effective. People are frustrated. Every reason to be.
We’re not served though by a dumbed down & poorly worded question. A better question would be “Do you support closing corporate welfare loopholes in exchange for dollar for dollar property tax reduction“. If that’s the question than for me the answer is YES. I 100% support closing corporate welfare tax loopholes.
It’s perhaps a less politically expedient wording since it’s a more complicated narrative. Doesn’t fit into a nice concise bullet point or immediately illicit angry responses. It does though more closely reflect actual issues at play. The question is how do we shift revenue away from property taxes without increasing the net revenue we send to Harrisburg?
What I hope this isn’t, is a money in politics thing. I suspect it is. Cable TV is a dying business with an ultra powerful lobby. The fact there is no sales tax on cable TV is arbitrary corporate welfare. Do the math. . So in this post Rep’s try to cash in on populist anger with the added benefit of not upsetting corporate masters. (To be clear not accusing Marcia Hahn of take cable TV lobby money. This goes way above her. This falls on leadership who give the marching orders) A theme in alot of my posts about state Gov. is that leaders from both parties are generally guilty of serving special interests. Who represents us?
For the record, to be clear so this can’t be misconstrued: For me this is not about more and more and more revenue. I do not believe we need more revenue to fix a number of PA’s issues. We’re NOT an ATM for Gov. Wolf. I think we desperately need to shift the burden away from property taxes in dollar for dollar swaps. Closing corporate welfare loopholes is one way to do that. Problem is it’s a complicated conversation and doesn’t fit tidy in a pandering post and could upset big $$$. This is a reason why HB76, property tax elimination keeps swinging and missing.
Also raising the PIT without property tax reduction is certainly an issue. But the little throw in line about movie tickets, cable TV and digital media is populist trolling.
Related: I try to write about Lower Mac issues in depth and detail. Sometimes I get down into the weeds. That is because I have faith in voters intelligence. Lower Mac residents haven’t let me down. We have sophisticated voters. State Rep’s should take some shots at having more detailed conversations instead of cutting and pasting. Don’t be afraid of the tough conversations. I think voters appreciate it.