The Tax Delinquency Conundrum
Council talks tax delinquency with city officials and collection agencies
Council freshmen call for hearings on tax delinquency
Each of the six newest members of City Council introduced resolutions Thursday morning calling for Council’s Committee of the Whole to hold hearings on various aspects of the city’s tax delinquency…
City's tax delinquency epidemic deepens
Philadelphia property tax delinquents piled up an additional $43.8 million in new debt over the last year, increasing the total amount owed to the city and financially desperate School District to…
Sheriff sales failing to round up promised bonanza of property tax deadbeats
Two years ago, the City of Philadelphia offered its legions of tax deadbeats a once-in-a-generation chance at amnesty: a 54-day window to settle their accounts without paying a dime in penalties…
Mapping tax delinquent properties in Philadelphia
Taxes in Philadelphia After decades of weak collection efforts, property tax delinquency has become epidemic in Philadelphia. There are about 111,000 tax delinquent accounts in the city, or nearly one out…
How Philadelphia is failing to proceed on taxes owed
Sometime in the next three months, state lawmakers will begin formally considering a bill that would make Philadelphia finally deal with its 100,000-plus backlog of tax-delinquent properties. It will not be…
Special report: How tax delinquent properties thwart development
For most of its recent history, the 1700 block of Manton Street in Point Breeze was notable only as a 420-foot-long case study in Philadelphia’s ills. Violence? Check. Abandonment? Check. Crack…
Flawed delinquency records abound
According to city records, a West Philadelphia company, Neighborhood Restorations, is one of the biggest property-tax deadbeats in town, owing $247,000 on nearly 300 tax-delinquent parcels. But the city records are…
Many delinquent properties have real market value
How much are delinquent properties in Philadelphia actually worth? Some, like the Foxwoods casino site, are worth plenty. But there are many others — vacant lots and abandoned shells in some…
Broken assessment system complicates sales of delinquent property
Annual property-tax bills in Philadelphia are determined by a relatively simple calculation: the tax rate (9.08 percent in 2012, 8.26 percent in 2011) times the assessed value of the property equals…
Special report: The delinquency crisis
Philadelphia runs the least-effective delinquent-property-tax collection system of the nation's biggest cities, a system that has created a “culture of nonpayment” and cost the city and cash-strapped School District $472 million…
This report is the result of a collaborative effort between the Philadelphia Inquirer and PlanPhilly. The project was made possible by a competitive award funded by the William Penn Foundation and awarded by J-Lab, a division of the School of Communication at American University. All records of tax delinquencies and sheriff sales were obtained from the City of Philadelphia through right to know requests. The aggregate property tax figures cited in this report reflect outstanding debts to the city as of April 30, 2011.
