AFT Pennsylvania opposes legislation that would replace school property taxes with historic increases in sales and personal income taxes and then redistribute education funding largely to a handful of wealthy, high-tax school districts.
Property tax elimination legislation saddles a smaller portion of the population with new and highly regressive taxes and distracts from any serious discussion of how Pennsylvania can raise sufficient and sustainable revenues to fund all public schools adequately and fairly.
- Legislation will not eliminate property taxes.
- Responsibility for education funding shifts to middle-class, working and poor families and away from big corporations.
- Property tax "elimination" will leave all but a few wealthy school districts without sufficient funds to maintain education programs, extracurricular programs and school buildings, athletic fields and other facilities.
- Pennsylvania's new fair-funding formula would be rendered unusable and current funding inequities will be baked in.
- Property tax "elimination" undermines local control over school programs, transferring decisions about how schools are managed to unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats in Harrisburg.
- Homeowners lose their federal tax deduction for property taxes, sending an additional $600 million of local taxpayer money to Washington, D.C.