Federal Impact Aid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Federal Impact Aid is designed to assist United States local school districts that have lost property tax revenue due to the presence of tax-exempt Federal property, or that have experienced increased expenditures due to the enrollment of federally connected children, including children living on Indian lands. The Lanham Act (1940) provided for a rudimentary form of Impact Aid as payments in lieu of taxes for districts with military bases within their boundaries. In 1941, Congress amended the Lanham Act, expanding Impact Aid to include funding for the construction of public schools. In 1950, Congress enacted two laws, P.L. 815 and P.L. 874, that began the grant program in its present form.[1] The Impact Aid statute is now Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA)), and the program's regulations can be found in Title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 222. Total funding for this program has exceeded $1 billion since 2002.[2]
Payments for Federal Property are funded through a formula grant designed to offset the financial burden of school districts with large amounts of non-taxable, Federal land. In order to receive a payment, the school district must be able to prove that the Federal government took land off the tax rolls that was worth at least 10% of the total value of the district at that time of the government's acquisition.[3] The amount of funding a district receives is based on a present valuation of the Federal property, which is derived from adjacent parcels in the school district. Congress has funded this grant annually since the inception of the Impact Aid law.