Sharon city council adds 5 mills to property taxes for this year

People from Ohio don’t have to pay the city’s higher wage tax.

STAFF REPORT

SHARON, Pa. — City council added five more mills to the city’s total property tax millage for 2009 to compensate for a reduction it had to make in a wage tax increase.

Council voted Monday at a special meeting to raise the property tax millage from 21.5 to 26.5 mills.

Council had originally voted to lower the millage from 39.5 to 21.5 with the idea that it would make up the revenue by raising the city’s wage tax from 1 percent to 2.25 percent.

Council enacted a budget Jan. 5 that included the 21.5 mills, and also approved the wage tax increase. Then, Mayor Bob Lucas discovered that the state would not allow the city to tax workers from Ohio at 2.25 percent. Council also passed an ordinance Monday fixing those workers’ wage tax at 1 percent, according to state law. Without being able to tax out-of-state residents at the higher rate, the city would collect $500,000 less than anticipated, Lucas said.

Residents who live elsewhere in Pennsylvania but work in Sharon will not pay the city’s wage tax. They’ll pay a wage tax to their own municipalities.

Lucas proposed the wage tax increase to give senior citizens and businesses in Sharon a break in property taxes, he has said.