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Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2017 - 2018 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: April 3, 2017 03:52 PM
From: Senator Jay Costa
To: All Senate members
Subject: PA Home Rebate Plan -- School Property Tax Elimination for 60% of Homeowners
 
Please join me in co-sponsoring legislation similar to Senate Bill 15 from the 2015-2016 legislative session. The bill was co-sponsored by Senators Hughes, Williams, Blake, Boscola, Brewster, Farnese, Fontana, Haywood, Kitchen, Leach, Tartaglione, Wiley, Wozniak, and Yudichak.

The PA Home Rebate Plan is a school property tax reduction and elimination plan that will provide a homestead or farmstead owner a property tax rebate up to $2,090 per year. The plan will eliminate the school property taxes of over 60% of homestead and farmstead owners according to a report from the Independent Fiscal Office (IFO).

The amount of the rebate is based on the average school property tax paid by residential school property tax payers across Pennsylvania, confirmed at a total $6.9 billion, and divided by the total number of homesteads and farmsteads in the state.

$6,900,000,000 residential school property taxes/~3,300,000 homesteads and farmsteads = $2,090

An additional benefit of opting for a direct-to-homeowner rebate, is that it avoids the pitfalls of choosing a complicated formula that ultimately ends up with winners and losers.

Providing up to half of the average school property tax bill or 100%, whichever is lower, is anticipated to require about $4.2 billion in new revenue. In addition, the rent rebate program improvements will cost an additional $400 million.

The PA Home Rebate Plan will be funded by an increase in the personal income (PIT) and sales taxes that are within reason. Increasing the PIT to 3.95% and the sales tax to 6.6% will fully fund the rebate and a substantial improvement in the rent rebate program. This will raise the necessary $4.6 billion to fund the program.

A rebate based on the average property tax bill is simple to understand, eliminates 60% of school property taxes, and can be imposed with a reasonable increase in the PIT and sales tax.

Please join me in co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation.



Introduced as SB768