City's Calculator Helps Homeowners Anticipate Property Tax Scenarios
By Mike Dunn
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Now that Philadelphia homeowners are getting their new property assessments in the mail (see related story), the city is offering a website to help them get a better sense of what it could mean next year when the resulting tax bills are due.
You may have your assessment, but two major questions are still unanswered: what is the rate on which that assessment will be taxed? And, what (if any) relief measures -- such as a homestead exemption -- will be offered by the city?
Now, the city's website has a calculator that lets you punch in the new assessment and find what your tax bill would be under different scenarios.
Mark Headd, the city's Chief Data Officer says, "What it will allow you to do is pick a specific homestead exemption amount, which has not been set yet. And it will allow you to use a slider to pick a tax rate. And once you select those two things, it will estimate what your tax burden could be."
So, while the final tax hit is not set in stone, the goal here, Headd says, is to give people a sense of what might happen.
"It is a way to use the assessed value information that is being provided by the city to estimate what your tax burden could be. And we hope that it makes it easy for people to see how the different options may affect the ultimate outcome."
You can find the site at AVICalculator.phila.gov.
