Court ruling should spark property tax debate

When it comes to assessing property taxes, most, if not all, of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are in violation of the state Constitution. That's the gist of a court ruling in Washington County that could have chilling implications across Pennsylvania.

From an editorial in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The summary judgment by Washington County President Judge Debbie O'Dell Seneca to reassess that county's real estate reaffirms that the uniformity of taxation clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution must not be ignored.

On Tuesday, Judge Seneca gave the county's three commissioners a grace period of about 10 months to begin Washington's first real estate reassessment since 1985. And they won't even have to do that should the Pennsylvania General Assembly or state Supreme Court decide to revamp reassessment laws.

The state Supreme Court should simply rule that Article VIII, Section 1 of the state Constitution ("All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax ...") means what it says.

County officials across Pennsylvania resist regular reassessments because they are expensive and could lead to anger on the part of voters, something politicians want to avoid at all costs to save their own necks.

But that doesn't change the fact that Pennsylvania's antiquated system of property tax assessments needs a major overhaul.

The Washington County ruling is a wake-up call to the Pennsylvania Legislature, which has failed to address the property tax mess for more than 30 years.

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.

Read more about the effort to eliminate property taxes at the Web site of the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition.