Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program

   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program
  • Thread Starter
#21  
Otherwise, if you go clean and green first,they may not be as forgiving as you will be already recieving a reduction.

You lost me here. What would be the reason for an appeal if I went clean and green? I thought it was a fixed rate set by the state and the county has no say. Maybe I acted too quickly as I just sent my application in. My appeal was this past Monday but I won't know the results for some time.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program
  • Thread Starter
#22  
The county reassessed in 08 or 09.

OK, here is some background information with some crazy value swings. This county hasn't has an assessment, so I'm told, since 1957 so the taxes on this property was probably peanuts. 2009 assessment came back at a value of 325,000 and the seller had other money problems so the property went on the market. I just learned about this figure during my appeal when I saw the tax history, a bit stupid of me not to look into this when buying the property. The seller did however apply for an appeal but the results were not known until after we closed in October 2009. The appeal board lowered the value to 93,200 which I thought was reasonable but I never knew about the 325,000 figure. 2012 comes along and they bump it up to 225,000 which I appealed last Monday. Clean and Green value is 11,800 which I just applied for.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program #23  
OK, here is some background information with some crazy value swings. This county hasn't has an assessment, so I'm told, since 1957 so the taxes on this property was probably peanuts. 2009 assessment came back at a value of 325,000 and the seller had other money problems so the property went on the market. I just learned about this figure during my appeal when I saw the tax history, a bit stupid of me not to look into this when buying the property. The seller did however apply for an appeal but the results were not known until after we closed in October 2009. The appeal board lowered the value to 93,200 which I thought was reasonable but I never knew about the 325,000 figure. 2012 comes along and they bump it up to 225,000 which I appealed last Monday. Clean and Green value is 11,800 which I just applied for.

Be sure to get a professional to assess the value for your appeal process.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program
  • Thread Starter
#24  
Be sure to get a professional to assess the value for your appeal process.

Is there still an appeal even through I signed up for clean and green? Is there more to the appeal process other than the hearing I attended last Monday? In other words, do I have to attend multiple hearings?
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program #25  
Remember there are actually 3 different taxes in your property tax bill. The small one in the spring is for county and township, It seems to me that the Clean & Green program has no effect on those. The one you get mid summer is the school portion and is the BIG one. The Clean & Green comes into play on that one.

An appeal would only help you on the county and township portion and may not be worth it, at least that is my recollection when I went through this about 5 years ago.
 
Last edited:
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program #26  
I have a clean and green as well on my 11 acres. Just enough to make the cut. The taxes are still set by the county I believe, but discounted by the act. Also I do not know if it has changed, but if you took property out of the 319 parcel, you owe the difference in taxes for 7 years. So a big plot that is subdivided for development, the non 319 section would owe 7 years of difference.

paul
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program #27  
I had my last property in PA in clean and green. Being a farm, adding farm related buildings was not an issue. When I sold it in 2008, the buyer had no issue with it. In fact, the buyer welcomed all the help he could get.

The big issue was with the school district which taxed on sales price. When we bought the place at 227k, I want to say the taxes were about 2500 and 319 got them down to maybe 1700. (I may be off on these figures) When we sold at 645, our taxes were around 3k or so. The buyer was looking at a potential tax bill of around 14k!

Through some legal procedures, that was brought down to around 7.5k but still? We were on the market for maybe two years and had buyers from Jersey say they may as well stay put. In the end, location, turn key and I would like to say by the grace of god brought us a buyer right before the market went bad.

Sadly, the area had many elderly farm owner's whose property had been purchased many years ago. Many of which went begging for buyers due to the tax basis.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program
  • Thread Starter
#28  
Remember there are actually 3 different taxes in your property tax bill. The small one in the spring is for county and township, It seems to me that the Clean & Green program has no effect on those. The one you get mid summer is the school portion and is the BIG one. The Clean & Green comes into play on that one.

An appeal would only help you on the county and township portion and may not be worth it, at least that is my recollection when I went through this about 5 years ago.

Thanks, I will check into that. The person at the tax office was talking like it applied to all taxes.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program #29  
I have 20 acres, with most of it in clean and green.
Its not a retroactive thing where if you build they come at you for back taxes. Its to cut down on junkyards and landfills. Its one of my issues with the pipeline people, if the pipeline goes in my taxes would go up.
the local dept of ag can fill you in more but its a quality easy to use program.

That's one of the things that must be considered when negotiating the pipeline ROW. You may not be able to stop the ROW, but you can ensure they pay any increased taxes for the foreseeable future.
BTW, if you do settle, be advised the payment is considered income...and the pipeline company pays you the gross. I made that mistake and we had to pay at tax time. Don't make my mistake.
 
   / Pennsylvania Clean and Green Tax Program
  • Thread Starter
#30  
Thanks for all of the information everyone. I hope the $11,800 figure isn't a typo or they are leaving something out that I don't know about yet. It just seems too low and too good to be true. Roughly, that should take my taxes down from the old rate of $1300 to $100 or so.
 
 
Top