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Estimating the Extent to Which the Existing Property Tax Structure in Pennsylvania, Aside from Preferential Assessment, Subsidizes the Agricultural Sector

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2017

Owen H. Sauerlender  and
Roger H. Downing
Owen H. Sauerlender
Affiliation:
Institute for Research on Land and Water Resources, The Pennsylvania State University
Roger H. Downing
Affiliation:
Institute for Research on Land and Water Resources, The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

There is widespread use at this time of various tax incentives (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 16) to stimulate property owners to maintain agriculture or open space on their land. The success of such programs will depend to a great extent upon the monetary incentives that they provide to property owners. The existence of preferential treatment in the taxing system prior to the implementation of preferential farmland assessment legislation has been proven by several authors (2, 4, 12). Such de facto preferential assessment has been noted in areas other than agricultural land (13, 20). This type of preferential assessment may be innate to the system that assessors use in determining the value of farmland (17, 18), or it may be the result of a conscious effort on the part of the assessing authorities to give preferential assessment to farm land and open space (15). The following quotation is taken from the Lehigh-Northampton County Joint Planning Commission Study, “Act 515 in Lehigh County – A Follow-Up Study”.

Type
Resource Economics
Information
Journal of the Northeastern Agricultural Economics Council , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , October 1977 , pp. 98 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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