Education department details tax relief
Pennsylvania homeowners may see some tax relief in the 2008-09 school year through revenues from slot machine gambling. The state Department of Education this week released the estimated amounts each school district will receive from the gaming revenues and the estimated amount of tax relief for the qualified property owners in each district.
The relief will only be given to qualified property owners.
“My understanding is it’s anybody who owns their own home and lives in it. You had to fill out a form by March 1,” said Andrea Kovach, the tax collector in Luzerne Township.
Kovach said that homeowners who filled out a form any time since the law was adopted in 2006 should be eligible. The form only needed to be filled out once. New property owners or those who failed to fill out a form in the past should have received the form from the Fayette County Assessment office earlier this year.
The reduction applies only to owner-occupied homes and farmsteads. It does not apply to rental properties or vacant lots. A homeowner who owns a second adjacent parcel would only receive the discount on the lot containing his or her home, Kovach explained.
“They aren’t actually getting a check in their hands; the school districts will take the amount off their tax bills,” Kovach said.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Web site, each school district will determine the exact amount of property tax relief per homestead or farmstead after the school board sets the tax rate for the 2008-09 school year.
State Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-South Union Twp., said homeowners will start seeing the tax reductions with the bills they receive this summer.
“I am working on legislation that would eliminate property taxes, however, this property tax reduction is a start and long overdue,” Mahoney said in a prepared release.
A total of $612.9 million is available from the state’s slot machine revenue for state-funded local tax relief in the coming school year. A formula developed by the state Legislature and the governor’s office for the fund distribution provides larger refunds in districts where the property taxes are high while income and property values are low.
The estimated reductions for school districts in Fayette County range from a low of $96 in the Brownsville Area School District to a high of $209 in the Uniontown Area School District.
herald_standa477:
http://www.heraldstandard.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19657758