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=History of property taxes in Pennsylvania=

2002 Special Session
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Senate passed resolutions in both of their respective chambers that called for a study on the reduction or elimination of property taxes as a source of revenue for school districts in Pennsylvania. The study found that Pennsylvania is far more dependent on local property taxes to fund childhood education than most other states. The study also found that there was significant variation between school district's reliance on property taxes for education funding. The House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Education Funding in September of 2002 which determined that the amount of money collected at the school district level should be reduced. Mark Schweiker called for a special session on property tax reform in the September of 2002. Multiple proposals were discussed at the 2002 special session, although none of these proposals were passed and the session ended with no resolution.

Homestead Tax Relief Act
Gov.Ed Rendell promised to convene a special session on property taxes during his gubernatorial campaign in 2001.The special session convened in 2004 and they passed Act 72 also known as the Homestead Tax Relief Act .The Homeowner Tax Relief Act of 2004 utilized a combination of state revenue from a combination of revenue from slot machines and earned income tax increases to allow school districts to lower property taxes up to the highest amount that would be allowable by the homestead provision in the Constitution of Pennsylvania.This attempt at tax relief was largely based on expected revenue from the newly legalized slot machines which were expected to generate a substantial amount of revenue. Act 72 also utilized a tax shift that would switch the source of tax revenue from a property based system to an earned income based system.

This act would be very similar to its eventual successor except for the fact that school districts could decide to opt in or continue to use the old property tax based system. Only 20 percent of school districts decided to opt into the Act 72 program which both Republicans and Democrats considered a failure at the time.

Governor Ed Rendell blamed the failure of Act 72 on the fact that the legislature made it optional for districts to participate in the program. after he was elected governor.The failure of Act 72 drove both Governor Ed Rendell and the legislature to find another solution to the property tax dilemma.

Act 1
A special legislative session was called in 2006 to solve the property tax conundrum. The solution that the legislators came to was Act 1, the Taxpayer Relief Act, which extended the property tax reform efforts that were made in Act 72 to all school districts within the state. Act 1 repealed Act 72 through its passage, although the homestead and farmstead exclusionary provisions found their way into the new law. These exclusions reduced the assessed value of the eligible property, therefore reducing the tax burden for these properties. Act 1 also introduced voter input on taxes and mandated both front end and back end referendums that allowed local voters to determine if they wanted their taxes to be raised.

2017 Constitutional Amendment
The State Senate voted in July of 2017 to give voters the chance to decide if they wanted there local governments to determine whether local government could exclude the full value of the residents' homes from taxation. This ballot measure did not cut property taxes outright and only granted the Pennsylvania General Assembly the power to pass a law that would authorize local governments to determine if they wanted to make the changes, although the ballot measure did not list any alternative sources of revenue. Local governments have had the ability to exclude up to half the median value of homes in their area for the past two decades.

=Criticisms of property tax system= There are some aspects of Pennsylvania's property tax system that have drawn criticism over the years. School Districts in Pennsylvania receive a significant portion of their funding through property taxes that the the school district decide to levy. Pennsylvania currently does not dictate parameters regarding property taxes and this has created an inequitable system for funding school districts. Lower income households effectively pay more than either middle class or more affluent households.

Act 319 offers discounted property assessments to owners of large undeveloped tracts of land. This act was intended to protect farms and forests, but it has also helped owners of country estates and large golf courses. This shifts the tax burden to other local property owners and businesses that pay higher property taxes. Many critics argue that this act has become a tax break for the wealthy and that the tax break has cost the state billions of dollars in lost revenue.