Broken promise
Gambling revenues yield little tax relief
If you remember, one of the successive carrots that proponents of commonwealth gambling first dangled to gain support for slot machines was the reduction — or even elimination — of property taxes.
With 10 casinos operating in the state, you’d think that, by now, school property taxes would have become nothing more than a minor annoyance.
?Anyone who feels that way when the tax bills start showing up in the mail in a week or so, please let us know. There has been and continues to be some property tax relief. But by no stretch of the imagination is it “significant.”
The latest pot of money from gambling headed for school districts for 2011-12 property tax relief amounts to a little more than $612 million. That’s not as much as last year because overall gambling revenues were off 5.2 percent. That, coupled with the growing number of taxpayers who qualify for relief, means everyone gets less.
The typical property owner will see a reduction of his or her school district taxes in the low hundreds. That is something, as state officials are quick to point out, but nothing near what was promised when the legislation legalizing casinos was first proposed.
What’s coming back to taxpayers is hardly worth getting excited about. We’re right there with those who recognize that the citizens of Pennsylvania were sold a bill of goods and that casino gambling will never pay off the way its supporters claimed it would.
The amount of money to be gambled is finite. And while the industry has been establishing itself in Pennsylvania, surrounding states haven’t been sitting on the sidelines.
There is action to be found in Delaware, Ohio, West Virginia and, of course, New Jersey. Given the increasing number of regional gambling venues, there’s good reason to believe that Pennsylvania’s share of the take has very limited growth potential and is just as likely to continue shrinking.
Meanwhile, school taxes keep going up, albeit slower in the last couple of years. Bottom line: Property tax relief from gambling monies is likely to go from “something” to “less than something” to “something less than that.”
Another broken promise from our friends in Harrisburg.
Bucks County Courier Times