Deb Haaland Secretary at U.S. Department of Interior | Official website
The Department of the Interior announced today that over 1,900 state and local governments across the United States will receive a total of $621.2 million in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding for 2024. These payments assist local governments in covering costs associated with essential community services, as they cannot tax federal lands.
PILT payments are made for tax-exempt federal lands managed by various bureaus within the Department, including the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They also cover lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission. The payments are calculated based on the acreage of federal land within each county or jurisdiction and its population.
“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to boosting local communities,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget Joan Mooney. “PILT payments help local governments carry out vital services, such as firefighting and police protection, construction of public schools and roads, and search-and-rescue operations. We are grateful for our ongoing partnerships with local jurisdictions across the country who help the Interior Department fulfill our mission on behalf of the American public.”
Since PILT payments began in 1977, nearly $12 billion has been distributed to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The Department collects more than $22.2 billion annually from commercial activities on public lands. A portion of these revenues is shared with states and counties while the remainder is deposited into the U.S. Treasury to fund various federal activities, including PILT funding.
Individual payment amounts may vary yearly due to changes in acreage data updated annually by federal agencies managing the land; prior-year federal revenue-sharing payments reported by state governors; and inflationary adjustments using Consumer Price Index data along with population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A full list of funding by state and county is available on the Department’s Payments in Lieu of Taxes page.
###
