What a racket.
A Boston Herald investigation found that many private non-profits in Boston are side-stepping their PILOT program cash payments to the city, to the tune of millions. These are not nickel-and-dime operations. The institutions participating in the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program include the Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University, the Museum of Science, and Northeastern University, among others.
They get a sweet deal from the city: Institutions get a “community benefits credit” “limited to 50%” of the PILOT cash payment contribution. So Harvard University, with a $50 billion endowment and where $90,000 will cover one year of attendance, gets $7 million in credits.
Those community benefits include donations to community programs, open spaces, access to healthy foods, access to cultural programs, and summer jobs.
Why can’t ordinary taxpayers get in on this action?
Who wouldn’t like to offset half of their tax bill with good works for the community? Taxpayers can already write off donations, but why not get community benefits credit for volunteering at a nursing home, organizing a recycling drive or planting a tree in the neighborhood? If the big players can do it, why can’t everyone?
For example, the open spaces credit. Harvard makes the Arnold Arboretum free to the public, a very nice perk. Surely letting the neighbors use your yard for a BBQ or game of flag football should count for something. Especially if you splash out on rhododendrons.
The Museum of Fine Arts lets folks in for free on holidays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth and Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which ticks off the access to cultural programs box. Who’s to say taking a few neighborhood kids to the MFA on one of those free days shouldn’t count as an individual’s “access to cultural programs” benefit?
Offering access to healthy foods should be easy — make apple oat bran muffins for a community bake sale and you’re there. And while non-profits get a benefits credit for offering summer jobs, individual taxpayers can offer winter jobs, as in paying local kids to shovel their stoop or sidewalk. As a well-endowed university might say: cha-ching.
At a time when families are still feeling the pain of inflation with every grocery trip and have to cut back on purchases of necessities as well as luxuries, reports such as this are galling. Non-profits, which often pay executives six-figure salaries while charging top dollar for their services get to avoid big tax bills because of the “community benefits” they provide.
Those community benefits aren’t helping to fill the city’s coffers, which are in need of a boost as commercial buildings sit empty downtown. But ordinary taxpayers are expected to carry their weight, payment-wise.
How is this fair?
Marty Walz, interim president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, said PILOT participants should pay what they’ve agreed to in cash and not just in “community benefits.”
We agree, and wish Mayor Michelle Wu luck in trying to extricate more money from these tax-exempt organizations. They’ve had it too good for far too long.
