121 articles
How Philly Taxes You · Part 5 of 8
Philadelphia's Realty Transfer Tax jumped to 3.578% in July 2025 — the second-highest in PA. Combined with the state, every transaction pays 4.578%.
How Philly Taxes You · Part 4 of 8
Philadelphia's tax structure pressures ~9,000 upper-income households to leave each year while locking lower-income families in. A $5 tax cut won't fix it.
How Philly Taxes You · Part 3 of 8
Parker's 0.01% Philadelphia wage tax cut saves a $50K family $5/year. The $1.9B tax generates real revenue; this is theatre.
A 2025 anniversary video. A YouTube comment section where everyone was positive. The animators understood what it meant to us.
How Philly Taxes You · Part 2 of 8
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.
How Philly Taxes You · Part 1 of 8
Philadelphia is one of the last major US cities to tax gross receipts. BIRT charges 1.410 mills on revenue and 5.71% on net income. Phases to zero by 2038.
Most founders think they can't afford a CFO. The math says they can't afford NOT to have one. Here's a pattern I've seen play out dozens of times: A founder raises a seed round, maybe $2-3M. They're running lean—engineers, a designer, maybe a first sales hire. Finance? That's a spreadsheet and an accountant who files taxes quarterly.
The counterintuitive math: Pay MORE cash and LESS equity → employees capture more value, work harder, AND it costs you less. This isn't theory—it's 40 years of compensation research and practitioner experience.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 9 of 1
This is Part 9 of Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology. Philadelphia Code § 15-101 calls the Fairmount Park Commission "former." Then § 15-202, about 225 lines later, says the Commission is "hereby empowered." Voters abolished the Commission in 2008. The Code never quite agreed with itself.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 8 of 1
Philadelphia's $15 Demolition Fund fee on every real estate transaction expires January 3, 2027. The City has not asked the state to extend it.
Every November, the Controller's office puts out a report on the cost of Thanksgiving dinner. Meanwhile, they missed $33 million in missing variance and nearly a billion in accounting errors. This is a fucking joke.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 7 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 9-203 bans street vendors from operating midnight to 7am. Chicago, SF, and Boston have no citywide curfew. Philly is the only one.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 6 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 10-108 was the most detailed municipal horse welfare law in the country. The industry ended in 2023. Council banned it June 2026.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 5 of 1
A 1961 Philadelphia ordinance required laundromats to maintain a public payphone. 65 years later, every Philly laundromat violates § 9-609.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 4 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 10-801 bans leaving an abandoned icebox outside — 73 years after iceboxes disappeared. The word 'icebox' survives in the title.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 3 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 9-609 (1961) bans laundromats from 1am to 6am, taking 24-hour laundry away from the third-shift workers who need it most.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 2 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 10-601 still bans spitting on city streets. New York repealed its anti-spitting law in 1971. Philadelphia never did.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 1 of 1
Philadelphia Code § 9-202 sets a $5 fine for street performing — set in 1897, never updated. The city’s modern sidewalk vending regime layered on top.
Living on a block with a block party permit is worth about 2 percentage points at the polls. A 2024 study by Raychaudhuri, Davidson, and Jones-Correa found the effect, and it is larger than most expensive get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Stop bleeding EV: Squeezing limpers must account for rake and non-ideal folds. The math is brutal, and most players are massively overestimating the EV of this spot.