Pittsburgh's Mayor had delayed the Council vote on applying a University student tuition tax another week.
This benchmark "back-door" tax on a group of nonprofits (universities) is precedent setting and has lots of eyes on it as an amazing & smart way to offset tax losses. At the same time, the concept effectively attacks the sacredness of tax exemption institutions, although I would say this is more of a use tax than a tax of the nonprofit. Semantics?
Meanwhile, the Mayor says he's making progress with the universities coming up with more money than the amounts they had been paying through a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program.
I find it hard to believe that the universities are actually going to make PILOT payments equal to what the city could generate through the tuition tax but, ok. And of course, a next question I would be asking were I Mayor or a Council member: if you (universities) were willing to pay this new amount, why did you make me work so hard to get to this point?