Monday, November 23, 2009

More Movement on the Non-profit Taxation Front + a Bonus Video



Another development in the battle to get non-profits to carry their weight from State Senator Wayne Fontana who
...said today that he will introduce legislation allowing municipalities to charge tax-exempt institutions a fee based on their property holdings.

Mr. Fontana said it would allow municipalities to negotiate voluntary payments with universities, hospital systems and other large institutions that aren't subject to property taxes. If that failed, the municipalities could charge them a services fee based on their buildings' square footage. A tax-exempt institution's first 50,000 square feet of floor space would be exempt, but any space above that would be assessed at $100 per 1,000 square feet.

"It's my opinion that they have a financial obligation to the city or the municipality for the services that they get," Mr. Fontana said. "They have vast amounts of real estate that they have accumulated."
The Penn State University Park campus has 19.7 million gross square feet which comes out to a fee of $1,965,000. Eleven years ago Graham claimed that
...Penn State has voluntarily agreed to provide the State College Area School District and 5 local municipalities more than $1 million per year in lieu of taxes.
I'm looking for a more official and up-to-date number on Penn State's in-lieu-of-tax payment, but it doesn't seem, from this,  as if this proposal by Sen. Fontana would be such a good deal for the Centre Region.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As far as I can tell, Ferguson Township is the only one that explicitly lists the PILOT in its budget. The rest hide it in general funds.