2010 Property tax "relief" from gambling revenues
On May 1, 2010,
the Pennsylvania Department of Education website posted a chart of estimated
slots-funded individual school property tax reductions for Pennsylvania
homeowners in 2009. Depending on your school district, your reduction
will be between $45 and $632; the average is $194. For almost all school
districts this is LESS than you received last year. Results for some counties
are not yet available because homestead data has not been received from
those counties. The charts will be updated when additional information
becomes available. The chart is here
as an Acrobat (PDF) file or here
as an Excel spreadsheet.
Again, this is only an estimate. Each school district will determine the actual amount of property tax relief for each homestead and farmstead after it determines its 2009-2010 real estate tax rate. In many cases your “relief” will be less than your increase in school property tax this year and will be nowhere near the 10% reduction touted by the state.
Further information from the Pennsylvania Department of Education is here.
Please note that:
- You will not receive the reduction if you have not applied for the
homestead exemption.
- Every homeowner in each school district receives the same amount of
relief.
- You will not receive a check for this relief; it will be deducted from
your school property tax bill.
To compare this year's estimated relief with the estimate for last year, the 2009 results are here as a PDF file.
These rebates are just more propaganda to allow the politicians to brag about the “historic” relief that they’ve so generously given to us and fall far short of the promised "huge" property tax relief.
Be aware that the Acrobat link connects to a PDF file. If you cannot view it, you may need to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader. The free Acrobat reader is available here. The much smaller and less intrusive free Foxit PDF Reader is available here. These links will open in a new window. If you are using an older version of Acrobat Reader you may receive an error message indicating that the file is corrupted. If this occurs please update your Acrobat software or use the Foxit Reader.