It took a while, but the Legislature has gotten the message that the new $52-a-year municipal tax isn't sitting well with low-income workers.

Pushed through primarily as a way for Pittsburgh to collect more from those who work in the city, and thereby tap suburbanites for more support, the tax was approved last year by the General Assembly for use nonetheless by any municipality in the state. Pittsburgh sought the flat, annual $52 municipal tax to replace the 40-year-old, $10 occupational privilege tax, but the size of the levy is not the issue so much as how it is collected.

Though the proposal was sold with the notion that it would be a convenient and painless "buck-a-week" tax, that glossy portrayal soon ended when many municipalities that enacted the tax eventually began grabbing it from paychecks in one lump, often from the first check of the year. That's fine if you're a well-compensated executive, but it's a real hit if your take-home pay is a couple of hundred dollars.

The Legislature also intended for the tax to be benign to the point that workers who earn less than $12,000 a year would be exempt. But, curiously, that language never made it into the law clearly; municipalities are told only that they may exempt those below that income level.

Fortunately, some legislators want to have another crack at the new tax so that the burden on the taxpayer isn't so great. That would mean setting a clear income threshold that defines who is exempt from the tax and better terms for paying it than deduction from a single paycheck. A-buck-a-week sounds as appealing now as it ever did, as does four quarterly payments of $13.

We realize that businesses may chafe at the idea of having to deduct a dollar a week from every employee's paycheck and that, with such changes, cities and towns will not be able to get their revenue from the tax at the beginning of the year. But taxpayers, particularly those trying to get by on little in an unforgiving work world, deserve better treatment than this.

No legislator should think for a minute about repealing the new municipal tax, but reforming how to collect it should be the order of the day.