The issue of non-profit contributions (payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTS) received some coverage in the northeastern part of the state this past weekend when the share of tax-exempt property in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and Hazelton was examined. The article does acknowledge the fact that much of the exempt land is government owned and therefore would never be taxed, so what a city could expect to glean if non-profits were subject to real estate taxes, assuming everything else remained static.
We pointed out in 2012 when the County Controller’s office examined tax-exempt property in the County that simply applying a millage (county, municipal, or school) to the value of exempt property does not translate into what that taxing body would gain because unless Federal, state, local, authority, public school, etc. property was taxed that portion must be removed. That’s what the article from the weekend shows—that even though 33% of Scranton’s total assessed value is tax-exempt, 46% of that total ($99.2 million) is government owned. This can extend to government-owned professional sport stadia, which somehow never get attention when the topic is raised in Pittsburgh.
