Which just happens to be one of the top universities in the world.
So many sour grapes on this thread.
Today I learned that saving money is considered hoarding - especially if you don’t give it away to students.
When they calculate the property taxes that such schools “should pay they” should subtract the increase in values of other property having the college creates. I’d call it a wash. Many do pay a services fee. Students and employees living off campus pay many taxes including property as do dorm students in many areas.
^^agree with Barrons. IMO, PILOTS are just a political shakedown. Some towns, particularly in the rustbelt, would no longer exist if it weren’t for the local college. Moreover, colleges don’t use that many local services relative to the locals. (Of course, colleges a major employers, and their employees pay plenty of local taxes.)
Larger colleges have their own police force, for example, and in general, students maybe rowdy, but they are not hardened criminals committing serious crimes that require serious investigation. College students come with their own insurance, so no impact on local hospitals.
Heck, the top xx colleges are major tourist destinations, which means plenty of $$ for local businesses, all of which are tax payers. (On another thread, we’ve discussed the tour busses pulling into parking lots.)
Would you apply that same logic to for-profit companies that are the dominant employers in their respective communities? Say, Microsoft in Redmond, WA? Apple in Cupertino, CA? Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg, TN? Heck, why not extend it to all businesses? Just think of the spin-off value the movie industry creates for LA or Wall Street creates for New York. And most of these businesses “don’t use that many local services relative to the locals.”
The problem for some cities is opportunity cost. In Boston, for example, more than half the land in the city is owned by non-profits. It’s hard to expand your tax base with new or growing profit-making (and tax-paying) enterprises when most of the land is more or less permanently off the tax rolls. And there’s no place for Boston to expand its territorial boundaries as it’s hemmed in on all sides by water and other municipalities. So even if the non-profits used zero city services (which will never be the case because they all rely on Boston for fire protection, some measure of police protection even if they have their own police forces, a network of streets to provide access, etc.), there still would be a negative impact on municipal finances. True, that’s balanced to some extent by the economic activity they generate, but that’s no different from the economic activity generated by any for-profit business which is expected to contribute its fair share of local taxes.
BC- the reality is that large employers which dominate a geographic area get HUGE tax breaks. I give you UBS, one of the biggest banks in the world, and the deal they got to move their trading floor to Stamford, CT. The fact that the building is half empty now- hundreds of employees laid off, so the multiplier effect of all those people buying lunch downtown and paying property taxes and all that jazz- well guess what, those employees are gone but the tax breaks remain and the citizens of CT got royally shafted. The state jumped through hoops and is left holding the bag.
Happens all the time. Rural areas which pay an economic development team to attract corporations to their counties aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It’s a pay-to-play deal- whoever puts together the most attractive package of tax breaks, rebates, financial incentives and access to roads, airports and whatever other infrastructure exists or needs to be built- that’s who gets the deal.
You think colleges are in the vanguard on this???
yes, and no.
The difference is that non-profits are exempt from tax. Period. Now, if you want to make the case the non-profits should not be tax exempt, that’s a discussion that we can have. (I would guess that the property tax exemption is based on state – not local – law?)
But, the fact that they voluntarily choose to pay PILOTS is nothing more than a facilitation fee to get new development approved, particularly in Boston.
Yeah, but that includes all the state and city government offices, and MTA, as well as the hospitals (which are also a tourist draw, and have completely rehabbed the LongWood area, which used to border no-man’s land)…
Maybe that’s their problem. 
Well, yes, “in the vanguard” in the sense that they’re 100% exempt from local taxation in most jurisdictions, and have been for a very long time. That’s not true of for-profit businesses. Certainly it’s true that some states and municipalities have given very generous tax breaks to particular for-profit businesses in a desperate competition for jobs. Personally, I think that’s a stupid and short-sighted policy because the long-term effect, multiplied across many jurisdictions and over time, is to shift the tax burden away from those with a greater ability to pay toward those with less ability to pay, so it’s profoundly regressive. And the more you do it, the more it encourages other businesses to seek the same or greater tax concessions.
Yes. And you didn’t mention churches, which collectively also control huge amounts of tax-exempt real estate. And cultural institutions—museums and such. And MassPort, which controls the harbor and the airport. But that doesn’t detract from my point. These are mostly institutions of metropolitan, statewide, regional (New England), or national significance. But if you’re a city and most of your revenue comes from ad valorem taxes on real property, and most of the real property within your jurisdiction is exempt from such taxation, you’ve got a very real, and very acute, problem. It means the tax burden on the minority of property that is not tax exempt is going to be very high, and that in turn makes the city a less attractive place to live and a less attractive place to do business relative to suburban areas and relative to other metropolitan areas. Boston is lucky enough to have, these days, a lot of other things going for it, so it’s perceived as a desirable place to live, work, and do business. That hasn’t always been the case, and even in its current prosperity, the city has a problem figuring out how to pay for basic services that clearly do benefit all these tax-exempt institutions. And colleges and universities are no small part of that equation. Harvard actually owns more land in Boston than in Cambridge, but there are plenty of other colleges and universities within the city of Boston.
Cute, but a cheap shot. The point of expanding the tax base is not necessarily to produce more revenue—though the salaries of teachers, cops, and firefighters, and their health insurance premiums, tend to go up, not down. The point is that if you expand the tax base, you don’t hammer the owners of the minority of land that does pay taxes quite so hard.