In Saturday’s (4/24) Boston Globe, Michael Rezendes reports, “For the first time, Boston’s major tax-exempt institutions—its premier hospitals, universities, and cultural centers—are being asked to make regular voluntary payments to the city based on the value of their property to help offset the rising cost of city services and cuts in state financial aid. Although many of the city’s nonprofit organizations have been making so-called Payments In Lieu of Taxes for decades, this marks a major change to a system that feels to some organizations uncomfortably close to tax bills. Boston officials recently mailed letters to leaders at 40 major nonprofits asking them to pay up to 25 percent of what they would owe if their property were not tax-exempt. … It is designed to gradually increase annual financial payments to the city by the major tax-exempt organizations from the $15 million they paid this year to $48 million over a five-year ramp-up period.” Some nonprofit leaders expressed concern “that participating in a plan that calls for making payments based on a percentage of property values might set a precedent that could eventually compromise the tax-exempt status of their institutions.”
Posted April 27, 2011
