Where in NJ aren’t property owners paying taxes? (MAP)

Map By NJ Spotlight

About 1 in 8 properties in New Jersey paid no property tax at all last year — shifting the burden for funding government and schools even further to homeowners and local businesses, according to a report by New Jersey Spotlight.

The report says that amounts to $145 billion in schools, government offices, parks, military sites, churches, cemeteries, hospitals, and other nonprofit locations off the tax rolls.

But private businesses benefit too, as governments give them tax breaks to boost economic development — including JP Morgan Chase Bank in Jersey City, the owner of the new Panasonic site in Newark, and Burlington Coat Factory in Florence.

In all, the report says, if each of those properties paid taxes at the current average rate, they'd bring in another $4 billion in revenue — a healthy addition ot the $27 billion being levied on properties last year.

And it's not an evenly distributed problem — in both New Hanover and Burlington County and Walpack in Sussex, more than 90 percent of the property is tax-exempt, because it's on federal land.  Camden and Trenton are among the nine municipalities where more than half all all property ix tax exempt — Newark just misses that threshold.

See the map above to see where the tax exempt properties are throughout the state, and read the full report here.