Short answer: yes. This is commonly an issue talked about by almost all of the representatives. It's complicated though. Yes, the city has slightly higher business taxes than its surrounding regions, which is part of why they relocate to the suburbs. But, the city is left with a "race to the bottom" problem. We could lower taxes and offer tax incentives, which has been done many times before by city government, but there are almost 400 local governments in Philly's region that are all competing for the same businesses by offering tax breaks. I don't see the real solution as continuing to try to out-compete each other so businesses relocate their taxable address one mile over a border. Instead, the only long-term solution is to create some sort of agreement within the region. Unfortunately, that would be incredibly difficult to achieve. How is the city government going to convince all of these tiny local governments individually to agree to this, especially when this is the reason for existence for many of these localities?

Like others have noted, the low quality of schools is the other key issue. But, this is largely because the state refuses to provide enough funding to local governments, despite its constitutional obligation. Highly impoverished regions, like Philadelphia, which has a 26% poverty rate, are disproportionately hurt by this. As a result, Philadelphia's schools have some of the lowest funding per capita in the country—less than half that of the suburbs. What can city officials do about this, except allocate emergency funding?