Without a lot of additional revenue, the ballot question isn’t going to change how the current homestead/farmstead program works or impact school funding stability – it just moves the cap up. 

The proposed amendment to the PA Constitution would change the existing homestead/farmstead exclusion from a maximum of 50 percent of the median assessed value of all homestead properties in a school district to a maximum of 100 percent of the assessed value of an individual property. 

Reports indicate that the ballot question will read as follows:

Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to permit the General Assembly to
enact legislation authorizing local taxing authorities to exclude from taxation up to 100
percent of the assessed value of each homestead property within a local taxing
jurisdiction, rather than limit the exclusion to one-half of the median assessed value of
all homestead property, which is the existing law?

The exclusion is an amount by which the assessed value of eligible properties (the primary residences of the owners of the homes or farms) is reduced before school property taxes are levied. 

The Taxpayer Relief Act provides for property tax reduction allocations to be distributed by the commonwealth to each school district. The state’s allocations are made from taxes on gaming proceeds. 

The funds currently available for property tax relief come from gaming. Those funds don’t enable districts to come close to reaching the current cap (50 percent of the median assessed value), and have not been increasing rapidly.

So, districts would not be any more likely to grant larger tax reductions without offsetting revenue under the new language than they are under current language.