Philly Leader

The City of Philadelphia offers a range of property tax relief programs for qualifying homeowners. Among them is the Homestead Exemption program, which reduces the taxable portion of your home’s value, saving you about $1,119 yearly. There’s also the Active Duty Tax Credit program, which pauses property tax payments for National Guard or Reserve military service members while on active duty outside Philadelphia. But for this blog post, we’re narrowing our focus to the City’s Longtime Owner-Occupied Program (LOOP).

LOOP at a glance

The Longtime Owner-Occupied Program helps you save on your Real Estate Tax bill by locking in your home’s assessment at a certain amount for as long as you remain eligible. This way, your property tax bills remain stable and predictable, even if the values of homes in your neighborhood increase. Nevertheless, your bill may still increase if the tax rate goes up.

LOOP is designed for homeowners who have lived in their homes for 10 years or longer and have seen an increase in their home’s assessment by 50% or more from one year to the next, OR by 75% over the course of 5 years. If this is your case, you should consider applying for LOOP. We’re sharing more eligibility information below.

Who qualifies for LOOP?

You must meet certain income and length of ownership requirements to qualify for this program. To be specific, you should apply for LOOP if:

• Your home’s assessed value increased by 50% or more from one year to the next, OR by 75% over the course of 5 years,
• You’ve lived in your Philly home for 10 years or longer, and
• Your income meets or falls below the program’s limits based on your family size. Please review the program’s family size and income cap guidelines to see if you qualify.

The deadline to apply for LOOP is September 30 each year. But first, be sure that all property taxes or payment agreements are current.

 Before you apply

You will need your current and previous five-year assessments handy before you apply. You can find these values at property.phila.gov. Also, please be aware that you cannot benefit from LOOP and the Homestead Exemption at the same time.

We recommend estimating your Real Estate Tax bill with both LOOP and the Homestead Exemption to determine which program works best for you before applying for LOOP – only you can decide what’s best for you. You can use our LOOP Calculator on the second page of the LOOP flyer to compare and visualize how much your Real Estate Tax bill would be with each program.

How to apply

If you meet the program’s eligibility requirements, please submit an application online using the “Search for a property” hyperlink on the Philadelphia Tax Center under the “Property” panel. You don’t need to create a Tax Center username and password to submit an electronic application to this program.

You can also fill out a LOOP application and mail it to:

Philadelphia Department of Revenue PO Box 53250 Philadelphia, PA 19105

Once you qualify for LOOP, you don’t have to reapply; it will be automatically applied to your Real Estate Tax bill each year. If you have questions, please call us at (215) 686-9200.

Original source can be found here.