
Heritage Museums & Gardens is worth $27 million yet doesn’t pay a dime in property taxes to its host town of Sandwich. Neither does Cape Cod Hospital pay Barnstable, nor does the 300 Committee pay Falmouth.
That’s because the institutions, like hundreds of others on the Cape and Islands, are nonprofit and aren’t required to pay tax on their property. Millions of potential tax dollars are lost to local cities and towns each year on the nearly $145 billion in untaxable land here, even though in many cases the organizations benefit from town services such as police, fire and road maintenance. Read more.