Wednesday, November 6, 2024 - 3:30pm
We recently released our 2023 update on environmental, public safety, transportation, tax administration, and equity tax expenditures found in the D.C. code. This update outlines changes to these tax expenditures since we last cataloged them using 2016 tax data.
Tax expenditures provide some sort of tax relief to those claiming them and result in forgone tax revenue for the District.
Key findings in our update include:
- WMATA Properties: The largest tax expenditure in the transportation category was a property tax exemption for WMATA properties, which resulted in $13.25 million in forgone revenue in fiscal year 2023.
- Electric Vehicles: An excise tax exemption for electric vehicles was the second largest tax expenditure for transportation, with about $1.1 million in forgone revenue in fiscal year 2023. Forgone revenue for this tax expenditure has grown as the number of new electric vehicles in the District has more than doubled from 966 in FY 2019 to 2,258 in FY 2023.
- Police Officer Housing: An income tax subtraction available to police officers that allows them to subtract rent payments for certain approved apartments, was used by only 10 officers in fiscal year 2022, indicating more marketing of the subtraction is needed.
- Condo Trash Collection: In fiscal year 2023, the property tax credit for trash collection at large multi-family condominium and cooperative buildings offered taxpayers a $125 credit to help cover trash collection costs, which averaged $215 per unit that year, yet trash collection for single-family homes and smaller multi-family dwellings is fully funded by taxpayers as a free city service.
- Environmental Tax Expenditures: Of the six environmental tax expenditures found in the D.C. Code, only one is being used by taxpayers (the condo and cooperative trash collection property tax credit), in part because regulations have not yet been issued for some of the expenditures.