PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pa. (Photo by JOSHUA PEACOCK/WIKIPEDIA/City & State Pa.)
A Pennsylvania court ruling declaring Pittsburgh’s tax on visiting athletes and performers unconstitutional will remain in place after the state Supreme Court declined to hear the city’s appeal.
Mayor Ed Gainey’s office had appealed Commonwealth Court’s 6-1 decision in January that the 3% public facilities tax that the city collected on out-of-town athletes and performers impermissibly treated those who live outside Pittsburgh differently than city residents. A message left at the mayor’s office late Monday was not returned.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case means that the Commonwealth Court ruling remains in effect.
Two National Hockey League players and a Major League Baseball player sued the city along with the players’ unions for the National Football League, NHL and MLB to overturn the fee.
Visiting athletes challenged the tax because it imposes a burden on professional athletes and others who use the public venues that other people who work in the city are not required to shoulder, attorney Stephen Kidder, a Boston attorney who represented the players and unions, told the Capital-Star in January.
When Taylor Swift, for example, played Acrisure Stadium in 2023, her earnings were subject to the 3% tax, but if the same concert had been held in a private venue, Swift would be taxed at only 1%, Kidder said.
Kidder said between 600 and 700 athletes have filed claims to receive refunds from Pittsburgh following an Allegheny County judge’s decision, which Commonwealth Court upheld earlier this year.
Pittsburgh financial documents show that the facilities tax has generated around $5 million a year between 2015 and 2019 with a peak of $6.3 million in 2017.
Former Miami Marlins outfielder Jeffery B. Francoeur, New York Islanders player Kyle C. Palmieri, and former Pittsburgh Penguins player Scott Wilson, along with the three players’ associations, sued in Allegheny County Court. In 2022 they won an injunction to stop the city from collecting the tax.
The court found that the facilities tax violated the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniformity Clause, which requires that municipal or state taxes on the same classes of taxpayers must be the same.
It found the tax makes a clear distinction between residents and nonresidents that violated the uniformity clause. The court rejected the city’s argument that the tax burdens are the same because residents pay 1% to the city and 2% to the school district.
In an opinion for the Commonwealth Court majority, Judge Ellen Ceisler said the 2% school district tax that residents pay in addition to the 1% earned income tax cannot be considered to equalized the tax burden for residents and nonresidents who pay the facilities tax because the school district has no authority to tax nonresidents.
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