TAX - NEW HAMPSHIRE

Bishop of Protestant Episcopal Diocese in New Hampshire v. Town of Durham

Supreme Court of New Hampshire - December 9, 2016 - A.3d - 2016 WL 7177763

Church appealed town’s assessment of property tax on 24 spaces in church parking lot that church leased to state university students. The Superior Court, Strafford County, Houran, J., entered summary judgment for town, and church appealed.

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire held that spaces in church’s parking lot leased to state university students were not exempt from property tax.

Spaces in church’s parking lot leased to state university students were not “used and occupied directly for religious purposes,” within meaning of statutory exemption from property tax for “houses of public worship, buildings, and the lands appertaining to them owned, used and occupied directly for religious training or for other religious purposes by any regularly recognized and constituted denomination”; university students were using parking spaces for their own private and secular purposes, i.e., parking for about six hours each week, plus special event days and during snow plowing and repair operations, and church did not argue that leasing spaces to university students was reasonably necessary to carry out its mission.



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