BPT v. Wage Tax

[Hospitalitygirl]

They've already begun halting steps towards reform. The busines license used to be a $300 lifetime fee. Now it's $50 per year. That's a startup-friendly improvement. They need to continue to do things like this to encourage people to strike out and start companies in Philly. It's going to be the centerpiece of Bill Green's mayoral campaign in three years, so he needs to get cracking so that there will be results to crow about. Nutter's already agreed to support this plan and make it happen.

HG<=====>rubs temples and squeezes eyes shut...

[Minze]

They've already begun halting steps towards reform. The busines license used to be a $300 lifetime fee. Now it's $50 per year. That's a startup-friendly improvement. They need to continue to do things like this to encourage people to strike out and start companies in Philly. It's going to be the centerpiece of Bill Green's mayoral campaign in three years, so he needs to get cracking so that there will be results to crow about. Nutter's already agreed to support this plan and make it happen.

You can't be serious? If a startup doesn't have the $300 for a lifetime fee for a business, that they can carry with them and move to other businesses they may start, then they shouldn't be starting a business. Now a $50/year fee to the city sounds like a benefit to the city, not to the business.

[billy ross]

You can't be serious? If a startup doesn't have the $300 for a lifetime fee for a business, that they can carry with them and move to other businesses they may start, then they shouldn't be starting a business. Now a $50/year fee to the city sounds like a benefit to the city, not to the business.

I'm guessing that you never started a viable business. In the first year or two short-term survival is the goal. You've got to prove that the business model is viable. $50 per year is better than $300 for life if you're not sure the business will make it more than 6 months. Once the business has two years or so of a track record, it should be able to think long-term enough that it can pay the $300 and be done with it.

A few years ago a family renovated the family's bar in my neighborhood, which had been closed for 25 years or so. They replaced EVERYTHING, saying that they wanted everything to last for decades - they didn't want to lift a finger after the renovations were over. I took some of the stuff (i.e. a perfectly good gently used Bradford-White water heater) that they took out and installed it in my building two doors up. The irony is that that family couldn't run that bar, and they lost it and the father's retirement within 18 months, while I still own the building two doors up. I still have that water heater bouncing around somewhere, too.