Note: We know that property tax talk is boring. Read this anyway, it’s important.

As many of you have probably observed in terror, our fair city’s leadership is currently endeavoring to fix our long-busted property tax system. Much has been made of the mayor’s proposal to tuck a $94M tax increase to benefit the school district into this effort, but today we bring a potentially destructive, totally unintended consequence of the Actual Value Initiative (AVI) to your attention, hopefully before it’s too late.

We are totally petrified about what AVI could mean for small business in Philadelphia.

What are they doing?

Because AVI will mean lower tax bills for major pieces of commercial real estate in Philadelphia, like the Liberty Towers, some members of city council have suggested increasing the Use and Occupancy tax rate, to recapture some of that lost revenue. Use and Occupancy tax, for…