Property Taxes Changing in Philadelphia

The City of Brotherly Love might have just gotten a little less loving. The city recently voted to institute a new property assessment process to calculate property taxes throughout the area. In 2010, the city collected $1 billion in property taxes. The new assessment method will bump that up by $200 million or so. However, don’t expect everyone to be taxed equally.

The Philadelphia tax assessment will be made based on market value for the home in question. This will hit different homeowners in several ways. Some will find that their tax burden has increased, while others will find they actually get a break on their bill. While this might be something of a shock to those outside the area, it’s actually good news for many residents. It seems that the city’s assessments have been so inaccurate that the inequities were significant across the board. To combat the problem, the mayor actually froze all reassessments in 2010.

Apparently, property values had increased by about 20% between assessment method revisions, meaning that the city has lost out on quite a bit of revenue. The current bill will help to recoup some of those lost funds, while hoping to even the playing field a bit in terms of fairness for the future.

Just how the new property tax system will play out is uncertain, as is how it will be received by the city’s residents. Those hit hardest by the new policies will certainly be unhappy, but proponents of the measure say that the number of people forced to pay more will be outweighed by those who benefit. The measure is also supposed to help replace funds that would be derived directly from resident’s pockets, like the proposed $300 per home trash collection fee.