Fixing Memphis’s economic malaise is daunting, to say the
least, but with a 27.6% poverty rate, I expect our Memphis leadership to
address the inequities that plague our tax base – inequities that are as clear
as day: 165,679 (42.3%) of the Memphis workforce are non-residents working in
the city out of a total of 391,232 workers in our city. This means 225,553
(57.7%) of working Memphis residents are paying property taxes and
supporting the city. Non-resident Memphis workers use Memphis streets, parks, sewers,
museums and other amenities…. but leave the city in order to avoid paying
Memphis taxes (AND flee the high cost of private schools).
It is my understanding that the City of Memphis does not
have the legal right, according to state law, to create a payroll tax for our “working
non-residents” - even though non-resident income tax laws have been on many
states' books for decades.
I would suggest that
the City do what Comcast/Xfinity does…create a payroll FEE to equalize this loophole destroying Memphis.
On first blush, one could say this would be a disincentive
for Memphis businesses. On the contrary, it would incentivize workers to move
to Memphis. In addition, the city could use these fees to give better
incentives to businesses to move to Memphis.
This doesn’t address the failure of local school systems and
the NEED for good, safe public schools, which I believe has equal weighting
with taxes when a family with 2 kids decides to move to Collierville.
I applaud the Strickland administration for it’s strict,
frugal, economic policies to date, but fundamental “outside the box” ideas are
needed to address the obvious weaknesses in our city.
