Court Opinion

ID: 9646590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:03:49.457884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:39.569213
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Rogers:
This tax exemption case grows out of the Local Economic Revitalization Tax Act (LERTA), Act of December 1, 1977, PL. 237, 72 P.S. §4722-4727. The purpose of LERTA is to encourage the improvement of deteriorated properties by authorizing local taxing authorities to exempt from local taxes properties whose owners are willing to bear the costs of improvements. The City of Philadelphia on the authority of LERTA, added implementing provisions to the City Code.
Section 6(a) of LERTA, 72 P.S. §4727(a), is entitled “Procedure for Obtaining Exemption” and provides that “Any person desiring tax exemption pursuant to ordinances or resolutions adopted pursuant to this act, shall notify each local taxing authority granting such exemption in writing on a form provided by it submitted at the time he secures the building permit. . . .” (Empha*407sis supplied.) Philadelphia Code Section 19-1303(3)(a), a part of the Code provisions implementing LERTA, provides the following procedure: “At the time a building permit for construction or an improvement is applied for the Department of Licenses and Inspections shall notify the applicant by printed notice of the possibility of a tax exemption under this bill.”
As appears by the facts in this case, the procedure actually followed by Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections was to attach to building permits (we are told in small print) the following notice: “Information for exemption from a real estate tax on improvements to properties may be obtained by contacting the Board of Revision of Taxes. . . .”
I respectfully dissent from the order of the majority upholding the denial of exemption in this case because the City’s procedure complies neither with LERTA nor the relevant provision of the City Code.
As we have seen, LERTA requires the local taxing authority to provide the applicant for a permit to improve a deteriorated property with a form upon which he may request the exemption. No such form was provided to the applicant.
The Philadelphia Code provides, as we have also seen, that the Department of Licenses and Inspection “shall notify the applicant” for a building permit at the time of the application “of the possibility of a tax exemption under this bill.” The notice provided the taxpayer in this case did not notify the appellant of the possibility of an exemption; it told the appellant only where information for exemption “may be obtained.”
Finally, LERTA confers no legislative rule-making power upon the local taxing authority; it grants no rule-making powers whatsoever. Hence, Philadelphia’s procedure which so markedly deviates from the procedures established by LERTA, is certainly ineffective.