Paper investigates Philly’s flawed tax board

Mark Fazlollah and Joseph Tanfani of the Philadelphia Inquirer examined the city’s flawed Board of Revision of Taxes. The board, among other things, allowed backdoor tax cuts that cost the city millions. According to the article, “Decades of such deals and persistent mismanagement by the BRT have left Philadelphia with one of the most unfair and chaotic property tax systems in the nation.” The board introduced a new set of proposed “actual values” last week in an attempt to fix some of the long-standing problems, but, “an Inquirer review of dozens of commercial properties found that many new numbers still bear little resemblance to recent sale prices.”