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Thousands Of Philadelphia Homeowners Could Get Higher Tax Bill

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Some 23,000 Philadelphia homeowners will see an increase in their 2017 tax bill, because of a citywide reassessment of land values. That's the finding of the Pew Philadelphia Research Initiative.

Some residents may be happy to learn whose taxes are going up.

The ten-year tax abatement has been a flashpoint since it was adopted in 2000. Many feel it spurred development, but some long-time taxpayers felt it was unfair -- a benefit at their expense to newcomers with high incomes. Those taxpayers might be happy to hear that as a result of the city's re-weighting land value in property tax bills, the amount of the abatement on nearly 7,000 properties -- close to half those in the program -- dropped, according to Pew Initiative Director Larry Eichel.

"It's interesting to see the impact of this is to reduce somewhat the amount of taxes the city is not collecting as a result of the abatement," he says.

Eichel says other factors are at work in another 16,000 cases where tax bills are expected to rise, giving the city, overall, an additional $13-million in revenue.

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