Abatements Unfair

Friday, Jonathan Stein from Community Legal Services and a past member of the Philadelphia Tax Reform Commission got a letter to the editor published in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for an end to Philadelphia's 10-year tax abatements for the "super-rich." The letter is reprinted below.

"The Page-One story Wednesday ("Sky-high condo, record-high price") reporting on the $7.7 million- and other multimillion-dollar condos being sold at Liberty Place, should be the poster child for the repeal of the city's real estate tax abatement law.

Even though your article failed to dig into the details of the abatements, these sales are undoubtedly saving the super-rich buying these condos many hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate taxes.

This forces the city to make up the losses through major tax increases on all other residents of the city, including many low-income and fixed-income homeowners, and it denies the school district needed revenues from property taxes.

The private marketplace in Center City and adjoining areas have proven quite sufficient to generate building without windfall, welfare-for-the-wealthy subsidies to these homeowners and their developers.

The city should end this tax abatement, establish homestead exemptions and circuit breakers before any property tax increases are adopted, and quickly reform the property tax assessment system."

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