Via Miriam Hill, a pleasant surprise from Kenyatta Johnson who has the least bad idea for helping poor people who can’t afford the new more accurate tax bills:
Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, whose district includes Graduate Hospital and other neighborhoods where tax bills are expected to soar in 2014, introduced a bill that would limit increases for households whose income does not exceed 160 percent of an area’s median income.
People in that group could defer any increases greater than 2.5 times their previous tax bill until they sold their property or could otherwise afford to pay. Everyone would be required to pay at least $1,000.
“These residents did not create this system, and we need to recognize that some folks simply just cannot afford such a drastic increase all at once,” he said.
In some parts of Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze, he said, some residents are facing tax bills 10 times higher than previous ones.
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Tax Deferral is NOT THE ANSWER, because you still have to pay this astronomical Tax increase; also, usually the deferred taxes have to be paid with a high interest, like an additional mortgage. My present tax at $750.00 is too much for my very common small 2-bedroom, 1 bath house in Graduate Hospital neighborhood. I ,like, many of the other hard working homeowners have lived here for many years and brought the neighborhood along and kept it from succumbing to crime, drugs; kept it from becoming a slum where folks would not want to live. We sacrificed out lives and quality of life to stay and make as good neighborhood for working class folks to live in.
But, afterward the Mayor puts in all the 10-year Tax Abatements to encourage wealthy people and developers to build expense homes, on which they essentially live free for Ten years because if they paid tax it would along with their mortgage double their housing expense.
I don’t blame these 10-year Tax rebate homeowners from taking the Government gift given them, any one would! But, no such gift has been given to us the old residents of these Gentrifying neighborhoods who have been paying taxes and now will be Taxed many thousands of dollars more because of how the Mayor boosted the Market Value of the neighborhood. Also, the 10Year Tax rebate owners are not affected by AVI they just keep paying the few dollars they’ve always paid: which is less than I pay because they continue to be only taxed on the land, not the house, and even the Land does not receive a significant increase under AVI.
The $650,000 Tax Rebate house next door to me will be paying $1,025 taxes next year for it’s “Mansion” while I will be increased to $5,754.00 for my shabby small 2-bedroom, 1 bath house, that not only has no central air (instead just 1 small window air condition for the entire house) I also do not have a washing machine, I use the public laundromats. In the this year 2013 I paid taxes of $750.00 which is about $150.00 more than the owner of the “mansion” pays and it is more than the owner of the Rehabilitated property next door to me pays. For all the prior years I have been paying more then these expensive properties, but now under AVI like a Slave being whipped I am really going to get a Mountain of Un-equitable Tax treatment upon me in the many Thousands of Dollars. Theoretically, it sounds like AVI would be Fair, but one has to see how it is being implemented to KNOW THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS “MUGGING” the old residents of the neighborhood and seeking to force them to move. This also happened in the years immediately after the abolishment of Slavery; Blacks owned Land and were forced by violence and the abusive chicanery of Government to give it up! As a Black person I will fight not to have it happen ,again, this time to me.
For many years I have been paying the taxes for the wealthy that Mayor Nutter has bribed to come to live in Philly and hopes they will supplant the existing residents, who were mostly Black. And, he has succeeded most Black home owners and renters are gone it is now a White neighborhood, but evidently the Mayor wants to drive the few remaining Blacks out. It appears he wants to make Graduate Hospital a Wealthy White Manhattan but, while he’s doing it force the residents who cannot flee his tax assault, force us to pay these astronomical taxes until we are finally forced to leave. And by that time he will have achieved his goal of neighborhood change in economic class and race.
If I WERE RICH I WOULD HIRE A LAWYER FOR A TAX CLASS ACTION SUITE AGAINST THE CITY FOR UNFAIR TAXATION. Because, it’s plain this was their plan all along!