My company's style guidelines specifically call for tabs, not spaces. PEP 8 hints that spaces are preferable but we've found the opposite. I like to see code indented 4 'spaces' in VIM, a coworker prefers 8 'spaces' in Emacs. Using tabs lets us both set our editors to show the code as we prefer it.
Note that in other C-based languages, indentation is in fact merely formatting but in Python indentation is syntax, thus we feel that indentation level 2 should be represented by 2 of something (i.e. tabs) not 4 or 8 of something (i.e. spaces).
Indentation character selection is probably the original holy flame war (even before the VIM / Emacs flamewars) so I do expected to be modded to oblivion for expressing an opinion on the subject!
