Tax Exemption for Pollution Control Devices in Pennsylvania

In current legal and political atmospheres, when governments are embracing notions such as pollution prevention and the three ”R’s” – reduce, reuse and recycle, while discarding command and control types of regulatory enforcement, some may be surprised to learn that since 1971 Pennsylvania law has permitted the exemption of corporate assets from capital stock valuation for the purpose of paying capital stock taxes, if the assets are devoted to pollution control or abatement. Straightforward though the idea of tax exemption for pollution control assets may seem, the execution of the statutory exemption, together with the regulation which was promulgated thereunder, yields a wide variety of hermeneutic fruit under the scrutiny of the judiciary and the advocacy of lawyers.