I love PA and I loooooooooove Philly, but eliminating admissions sales tax exemptions from nonprofit cultural institutions? Absolute BS and a true embarrassment. First Philly adopts Michael Vick and now this. Where's the heart in the City of Brotherly Love? This makes me so sad.
For those of you from PA, call your legislators and let 'em have it. Visit the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance for more info. Here's an excerpt from their summary of the situation:
"It seems that Governor Rendell and the General Assembly think they can balance a budget on the backs of our region's arts and culture. For the first time in Pennsylvania, the state sales tax will be applied to tickets for theater, dance and performing arts events, concerts, museums, historical sites, zoos and parks. The word from Harrisburg is that this revenue generated from these taxes could result in long-term funding for our sector. However, sports and movies - which we all know to be big revenue generators - can keep their tax exemptions in Pennsylvania. Why are nonprofit cultural institutions being singled out?"
that's crazy! it feels like there's a basic disconnect between the government and reality here. levying the taxes on museums and cultural institutions will only hurt those institutions bottom lines. people already complain about high admission fees for museums (especially ironic when they're willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a football ticket), and this will only serve to deplete the audience numbers, and force museums to have to go....back to the government for more financial assistance. sigh....sometimes i wonder if maybe museums shouldn't just install luxury boxes and build in mini-stadiums in the middle of their space to help with funding.
ReplyDeleteThis really surprises and disappoints me! I would think that the sports and movies bring in way more money and attendance than the cultural items and would therefore be the more logical sectors to tax (it would be more productive, literally). It seems particularly foolish because the extra tax on cultural tickets already often carry price tags that are hard to swallow will deplete the audience even further (and therefore produce less and less of the desired tax income). Sounds like everyone loses - what poor planning!!!!
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