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Some local municipalities and school districts are bound to be nervous in light of Dauphin County companies' latest tax-assessment appeals.
As of the Aug. 3 filing deadline, the largest tax-assessment appeals on file in the county outside of Harrisburg represented total assessed values of $84.5 million. Taking into account the widely varying mill rates in effect across the county, $270,000 in municipal taxes and $1.7 million in school-district taxes are at stake.
(A mill is one one-thousandth of a dollar, so if the applicable tax rate is 1 mill, for every $1,000 of assessed value, $1 is payable in tax each year.)
EQK Realty Investors, owner of the Harrisburg East Mall, Swatara Township, has the largest single assessment under appeal.
The land on which the shopping mall sits has an assessed value of just under $5 million and the building itself is assessed at close to $33 million. About $111,000 in municipal taxes and $629,000 in school taxes are on the line in the appeal.
Paul Cornell, Swatara Township administrator, said EQK is the municipality's largest taxpayer, the second largest being AMP Inc.
An appeal victory by EQK could certainly hurt Swatara's $5 million general operating fund, Cornell admitted. "We've held taxes at the same level for five years," he added.
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