# Payments in Lieu of Taxes

**Agency:** Interior  
**Account:** Payments in Lieu of Taxes  
**Source document:** Office of the Secretary · p. 105  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/budget/interior/payments-in-lieu-of-taxes  

> **Trust:** parsed from the agency Congressional Justification. Approximate, **not summable**, verify at the cited page.

## Funding ($M)

| Fiscal year | Basis | Amount |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FY2026 | enacted | 635.0 |
| FY2027 | request | 635.0 |

## Interior discretionary budget authority (OMB PBDB — authoritative)

FY2027 $18.80B, FY2026 $17.30B. This is the agency total, not a sum of the parsed lines.


## What this funds

Program Overview Payments in Lieu of Taxes are Federal payments to local governments that help offset lost property taxes due to the existence of nontaxable Federal lands within their jurisdictions. The program is based on the concept that local governments incur costs associated with maintaining infrastructure on Federal lands but are unable to collect taxes on these lands. The payments are made to local governments in lieu of tax revenues and supplement other Federal land receipts shared with local governments. Unlike other Federal payments that require local governments to use the funds for specified activities, PILT payments may be used for any governmental purpose. These payments support local government services in counties that have significant acreage of Federal lands within their boundaries. The PILT payments help local governments fund vital services such as firefighting and police protection, construction of public schools and roads, and search-and-rescue operations. In recent years, PILT monies have been used to fund projects to construct county buildings, purchase new police cruisers, and upgrade 9-1-1 emergency services. Since the inception of the PILT program in 1977, more than $12.6 billion in payments have been made to 49 States (all but Rhode Island), the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. The amount of the payments is determined by codified formulas (31 U.S.C. 6901-07) based primarily on population and the amount of PILT-eligible Federal land within an affected jurisdiction. Certain Federal revenues transferred directly to local governments under other programs - such as income generated from the use of public land for livestock grazing, timber harvests, and mineral receipts - are deducted from the receiving counties' PILT payments. According to the formula established by the authorizing statute, there are three categories of entitlement lands: � Section 6902: Federal lands in the National Forest System and the National Park System, lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, lands in Federal water resource projects, dredge areas maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, inactive and semi-active Army installations, and some lands donated to the Federal Government. � Section 6904: Federal lands acquired after December 30, 1970, as additions to lands in the National Park System or National Forest Wilderness Areas. � Section 6905: Federal lands in the Redwood National Park or lands acquired in the Lake Tahoe Basin near Lake Tahoe under the Act of December 23, 1980. Program Performance Estimates Payments made before July 1 help local governments to better plan for PILT in the preparation of their annual budgets. In 2025, a total of $644.8 million, based on approximately 607 million entitlement acres, was distributed to more than 1,900 local governments in 49 States, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The Department anticipates issuing 2026 payments before July 1, 2026. PILT-4 Payments in Lieu of Taxes


**Where it sits:** Civilian / Non-Defense › Interior › Office of the Secretary › Payments in Lieu of Taxes


*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. government. Civilian line dollars are parsed from agency Congressional Justifications and are approximate.*