If you haven’t already filed your income tax, no doubt the April 15 deadline is in the back of your mind. While you’re sending that one off, a local tax notification will soon arrive if it hasn’t already. Bills are mailed in the spring for county and municipal tax and in the summer for school district tax.
Local tax notices are on the way, informing us of County, Municipal, Fire, Per Capita, and Occupation taxes. In Pennsylvania, in addition to the state personal income tax collected by the PA Department of Revenue, municipalities, school districts, and counties may each levy several different types of taxes. County, Municipal, and School taxes are calculated by a mill ate or millage. The mill rate is the tax payable per dollar of a property’s assessed value. The mill rate is based on “mills.” It is a figure that represents the amount per $1,000 of the assessed value of the property, which is used to calculate the amount of property tax.
The county, school district, and municipality levied taxes on real estate owned within their jurisdictions. Each taxing authority will levy a different millage rate.
To calculate the property tax, simply multiply the listed assessed value by the millage rate and divide by 1,000. Your amount owed for those taxes based on real estate value, should match the amount billed.
My wife and I received our combined County, Municipal and Fire tax bill jointly in one single bill.
The same day we received the above combined single tax bill, each of us individually received an Occupational Tax bill ($9.80 each), we have no occupation – we are retired!
My questions to the various taxing authorities are: 1) why is being retired an occupation? and 2) would it not make more sense to incorporate an Occupational tax within the County, Municipal and Fire tax bill (making one single combined tax bill-saving taxpayers administrative, processing, and postal expenses thereby improving efficiencies)?