Boston property tax review

The Boston Municipal Research Bureau served up some chewy nuggets on the property tax situation Monday. The Bureau used the report to reiterate its long-held argument that a temporary increase in taxes on commercial properties enacted in 2004 be allowed to lapse as originally intended.

But the Bureau showed that even with the higher tax level, business properties' share of Boston's tax levy steadily shrunk: from 68 percent in fiscal year 2003, the year before the temporary increase was adopted, to 58 percent in fiscal 2007. Residential taxpayers, meanwhile, shouldered 42 percent of the city tax load, up from 32 percent in fiscal 2003. The business property tax rate in Boston is the lowest its been since 1991.

Even so, with the tax classification system, commercial properties continue to bear an outsize portion of Boston's tax levy based on the overall value of their holdings.

Of course, this all developed earlier in the decade when business property values were in a funk, while residential values hit the moon. Now that the market has done a 180, with the commercial sector on a tear and housing in the blues, the next city revaluation may produce a radical change in tax burden.