As you may have heard, Philadelphia is now the largest US City to have a casino. Ever since casinos were okay-ed in the state of Pennsylvania, nearby Harrah's and Parx in the suburbs hired people and are doing very well, bringing much-needed revenue to the State and their municipalities while saving people the drive to Atlantic City. With table gaming being legalized this past summer, casinos provide a much-needed economic boost to a stumbling economy.
It was only a matter of time before a casino was built here in Philadelphia and most of us here are glad it's finally happened. The Sugarhouse Casino in Northern Liberties is in a great location easily accessible by all modes of transportation and zoned for other businesses to piggyback on the casino's success.
Now there are always going to be protesters, people who don't like casinos for whatever silly reason they have. You also already have idiot parents taking the kids down to the casino and leaving them in the car for hours-on-end while Daddy gambles their college savings away. These are problems, though, that can be found in any city with casinos and definitely not the fault of the casinos that people decide to make terrible choices.
Even though it's a total lie that the recession is over and that this is still very much a "wait-and-see" economy, at first glance, it's very surprising that new businesses aren't popping up in the lots and lots of abandoned factories and warehouses and store-fronts in a one mile radius around the Sugarhouse.
At second glance, it's perfectly understandable why there really aren't any new restaurants or other businesses popping up: Philly is a terrible place to start a business and the leadership here should have thought of these things before the casino opened.
Philadelphia has some of the highest taxes on businesses in the entire country. In 2001, the business income tax rate here was 6.5%. The Gross Receipts tax rate here was .24%, set to go up very soon. The "Wage" Tax Rate? 4.54%. Let's compare that to Baltimore, just down I-95, where businesses do not pay income taxes, gross receipt taxes are unheard of and the wage tax is only 2.51%.
In fact, most other cities except Los Angeles and Memphis don't even have a gross receipts tax. Draconian taxes and forcing businesses to pay for problems they did not cause are not drawing businesses to set foot in this City.
It's a damn shame, too. Wouldn't it be great if a House of Blues or something were right by the casino? You could go see a concert and then go gamble afterward. Surely there are all types of restaurant chains that would love to open new franchises right by a bustling casino, so popular in its infancy that traffic is jammed all the way up through Port Richmond and Bridesburg.
Get rid of the ridiculous taxes businesses have to pay so new businesses can come here, thrive from a booming casino that isn't going to go away since people want to gamble more in a recession and they can also - get this - hire people and stimulate the job market. It's going to be laughable 2, 3 years from now when the Sugarhouse has been reverted to what the City thinks of strip clubs: no surrounding businesses and no actual gain of any kind besides the money that lines politicians' pockets.
"Thinking About Where To Set Up Shop? On the whole, you wouldn't rather be in Philadelphia after all." - Treasury & Risk Management
- AP
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