Taxing Grants . . . And Patience
You've got to give Pittsburgh city officials points for creativity. In their zest to find new sources of tax revenue, they recently targeted the research grants of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh as long-overlooked cash cows. In an article in the Pittsburgh Press (Feb. 25, 1990), director of finance Ben Hayllar was quoted as saying the city intended to investigate whether research grants from private corporations were subject to the municipality's business privilege tax. For Pitt, which received $143.2 million in research grants in fiscal 1989, this meant that the $11.6 million it received from corporations was at risk. The total was even higher at CMU, where $18.9 million of its $120.7 million fiscal year 1989 total was from private companies. Luckily for Iron City scientists, the hasty notion was just as quickly abandoned. "The fact is we...
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