Amid Uncertainties for Boston PILOT, Harvard Fails To Fulfill Payment for 13th Year

Harvard failed to fully make its requested Payment in Lieu of Taxes payment for the 13th year in a row last year, according to City of Boston data released last week.

The new data – released six months after its usual release in early fall — comes as the Boston PILOT program is mired in uncertainties. A yearlong renegotiation of its payment formula has shown few signs of progress, while the Trump administration has threatened serious funding cuts against several of its participants, including Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Harvard is also facing the potential revocation of its tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service, in response to its defiance of a slew of demands from the Trump administration. In such an event PILOT would no longer apply to Harvard, although the revocation of nonprofit status would almost certainly face legal challenges.

Such uncertainties are a challenge for both Boston and Cambridge PILOT programs that hope to see Harvard pay more in new commitments.

Harvard spokesperson Amy Kamosa wrote in a statement that the University “engages with the City of Boston in a variety of important ways.” She cited that in addition to PILOT, Harvard provides programming for Boston residents and pays municipal taxes on non-exempt property.

In a recently reached PILOT agreement with the City of Cambridge, Harvard committed to pay $6 million for a single year as the full renegotiation continued, with City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 citing federal funding threats as a factor for the delay.

“As the Council is aware, we are seeing an unprecedented shift in federal policies that has created significant uncertainty for universities,” Huang wrote in a letter last month. “In this context, the City and Harvard have agreed that it would be difficult to finalize a long-term PILOT agreement in time for the upcoming fiscal year.”

PILOT programs ask large nonprofit institutions that hold significant land in the city to pay a fraction of what they would otherwise pay in property taxes. The tax-exempt status of wealthy hospitals and universities means that their often large and valuable land holdings deprive the city of the property taxes it depends on to fund its budget.

As it has done for the last eight years, Harvard paid just 79 percent of the amount requested by Boston. Unlike Cambridge, Boston does not have individual agreements with its PILOT participants and instead asks them all to participate through the same formula.

That formula allows institutions to effectively write off half of the requested contribution with community benefits that they already provide to residents of the city. In past years, Harvard has regularly maxed out that community benefit contribution, citing its operation of the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain and free health screenings for Boston residents, among other things.

Harvard is the state’s third highest-earning nonprofit. Mass General Brigham — which operates Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals, both of which also participate in Boston’s PILOT program — is the first highest.

Harvard’s 2024 PILOT contributions to Boston included $7 million in credit towards community benefits and $4 million in cash contributions to the city. In total, Harvard’s contributions will increase about $125,000 from last year.

Harvard’s commitment places it eighth out of 20 educational institutions in Boston by percentage of funding requests met.

Enid Eckstein, co-chair of the advocacy organization PILOT Action Group, criticized the city for its delay in reporting the PILOT payment data, which came six months later than usual.

The City of Boston did not immediately respond to request for comment.

According to Eckstein, the city “moved towards reporting around Labor Day or September” after the Covid-19 pandemic, “And so that's what we were expecting. And we met with the city multiple times, and consistently at every meeting said, ‘Can you please at least give the numbers?’”

“Our ability to advocate and hold these institutions accountable very much depends upon a clear and transparent understanding of the numbers,” Eckstein added.

The 2024 PILOT program did not request substantially different amounts in funding than years past. However, the city did cancel funding requests for six museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the New England Aquarium, under the agreement that they would provide free admission on select Sundays for Boston schoolchildren.

PILOT funding is distinct from the community benefits promised to Allston by Harvard’s Institutional Master Plan, which details the next ten years of the anticipated presence and expansion of its academic campus into Allston.

Eckstein said she was hoping to see Harvard and other nonprofits in Boston maintain a consistent schedule of PILOT contributions.

“We all know budgets are based upon stability and the ability to predict, and when PILOT payments fall short, that hurts the city,” said Eckstein.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.