Part 2 of 8 in How Philly Taxes You
The Parking Tax That Stayed at 15% for Twenty-One Years
Philadelphia's parking tax sat at 15% for 21 years (1987-2008). The current 22.5% rate is in the upper third of major US cities.
Read § 19-1202 of the Philadelphia Code and you will find a sentence that has been load-bearing in this city since 1987: the parking tax rate for fiscal years 1988 and 1989 is hereby set at fifteen percent (15%). The sentence does not say “for the time being.” It does not say “subject to adjustment.” It says fiscal years 1988 and 1989. The Code just kept paying out that rate for a long time.
The city’s current parking tax sits at 22.5%, per phila.gov. But for twenty-one fiscal years — from July 1987 through June 2008 — the rate never moved. Every garage, every lot, every valet transaction in Philadelphia was skimmed at 15%, and the body that sets the rate didn’t bother to write a new number down.
This is the part of the Philadelphia Code that nobody reads and everybody pays. The rate isn’t low. The 15% figure actually represented a reduction from the prior 20% rate, which itself was a doubling from the 10% the city had collected since 1952. 15% on the gross receipts of any place that parks more than three cars for a fee is not a tax that disappears. It is a tax that gets passed through, baked into the cost of the garage ticket, the lot at the airport, the Saturday-night venue.
Other cities did it differently. San Francisco, New York, Chicago, D.C. — they all have parking taxes too, and by our count of major-city rates, most sit in the 8%-25% range, with the cluster hovering somewhere in the low teens. Philly, at 22.5%, is in the upper third of the league. Not the worst (that would be Chicago, depending on how you count the airport surcharge), but well above peer cities in the Northeast.
What’s interesting isn’t the rate. It’s the duration. The Code froze the figure, retroactively made it apply to FY 1987 as well, and then sat on it. For twenty-one years. That’s longer than most leases in this city. Longer than most marriages. The tax is older than the entire L&I permitting system, the Office of Property Assessment, and the school reform era combined.
In 2021, the city finally proposed cutting the rate — from 25% down to 17% — in exchange for higher wages and better conditions for parking-lot workers. The 25% figure was a temporary COVID-era rate that was already scheduled to fall back to 22.5% that July. WHYY framed the combined five-year hit — the scheduled drop to 22.5% plus Parker’s further cut to 17% — as a $130 million giveback. Urbanists called it a giveaway. Either way, it told you what the rate was actually worth: roughly $130 million in forgone revenue over five years, quietly skimmed from every transaction in a city with a chronic structural deficit, and not debated, not adjusted, not really noticed for a generation.
That’s the lesson. The Code is a snapshot. Every frozen rate, every uncodified update, every line that hasn’t been touched since 1987 still collects money. We just stopped looking.
Notes, Sources, and Methodology
The Philadelphia Code, Title 19, § 19-1202 sets the rate. The full rate history — 10% from 1952 to 1985, 20% from July 1985 to June 1986, 17.5% from July 1986 to June 1987, 15% from July 1987 to June 2008 — is published by the Department of Revenue’s Tax Rate History page. The current 22.5% rate is also confirmed on the city’s Parking Tax page.
The 2021 cut proposal is documented in WHYY’s coverage and the Inquirer’s report. The $130 million figure is a five-year cumulative projection: roughly $90 million from the proposed 25% to 17% cut plus $40 million from the scheduled expiration of the temporary COVID-era 25% rate. It is not an annual revenue figure. The 25% rate Parker’s bill was cutting from was a temporary COVID-era increase (Bill No. 200288, effective July 2020 through June 2021); the 22.5% rate took effect July 1, 2021 after the temporary increase expired.
The peer-city range (8%-25%) and “upper third” placement are an informal count of major-city parking-tax rates as of 2026, not a published survey. Chicago’s effective rate is the highest among the named peers once the airport and downtown surcharges are included; New York City combines a state tax with MTA surcharges; San Francisco’s rate varies by lot type; D.C.’s parking tax applies only to commercial lots above a threshold. The article’s directional claim — that Philly’s 22.5% is in the upper third of major-city rates — is defensible but is not pinned to a single survey citation.