Under New Jersey law, specifically the Long Term Tax Exemption Law (N.J.S.A. 40A:20-1 et seq.), a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) is an agreement between a municipality and a developer that replaces traditional property taxes on new construction or redevelopment with an annual service charge (typically a fixed percentage of annual revenue) paid directly to the town for a set term of 10 to 30 years.
When evaluating how these agreements impact local schools, a PILOT creates a distinct set of trade-offs: on the positive side, they can revitalize underused land and provide predictable municipal revenue that helps stabilize the local tax base, which shares the exact same taxpayers as the school district, without adding new students if the project is commercial or industrial. On the negative side, New Jersey law allocates roughly 95% of PILOT service charges to the municipality and 5% to the county, leaving local school districts with 0% of the direct tax stream generated by the building’s new value. Consequently, if a project introduces new students, the district absorbs 100% of the operational costs without an automatically expanding tax base to match.
Not a projection and not a model. These are the figures printed in the Township’s own Annual Audits, Exhibit A-2, the column headed “Realized”, for every warehouse tax agreement, every year from 2014 to 2025. Twelve audited years, nothing estimated, nothing missing. Each agreement is set out on its own below, then added up at the end.
Everything in this box comes from the Township’s published 2025 tax rate or its own audited accounts, and nothing in it is estimated.
That is the assessed value on your tax bill, not what you would sell for. Not sure? Use the township average of $380,800.
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To be exact about what is and is not exempt. The land under those warehouses is taxed normally, and the schools do receive their ordinary share of that. It is the buildings that come off the rolls, and it is the charge replacing the tax on the buildings that carries nothing for the schools. On the Amazon parcel in 2025 the district received $228,008, all of it from the ground, none of it from the charge.
Five findings. Open any one for the detail behind it. Each rests on a document you can open, and every source is listed at the foot of this page.
People argue about these agreements as though there were a single deal to defend or attack. Five are built and paying, and are set out one by one below. Three more are signed and waiting on a building. The terms run from eleven years to thirty.1
An ordinary tax bill is a percentage of what a property is worth. These agreements charge a percentage of what it rents for, and that percentage is fixed for the life of the deal, however valuable the building becomes.3 The charge also falls when a building sits empty. A tax bill does not.
Each agreement splits the property in two. The land is assessed and taxed the ordinary way, so the school district collects its usual 55 cents of every dollar on it,2 real money, and anyone who says these properties pay the schools nothing is wrong. But the building comes off the rolls entirely, and the service charge that replaces it is split 95% to the Township and 5% to the county.4 The school district’s share of that is zero. On a warehouse, the building is almost all of the value.
And the land tax is credited back against the charge. Every one of these agreements lets the developer deduct the land taxes it paid over the previous four quarters from the service charge it owes.3 So the land tax the schools receive comes out of what the Township collects. It is not additional money on top. The money flow inside the Amazon section below follows one year of it, dollar by dollar.
Each agreement does eventually climb toward a full tax bill. On the Amazon warehouse the Township’s own twenty-year schedule does not reach even 40% of one until year eighteen, which falls around 2030.1 A homeowner’s bill does not come with a seventeen-year grace period.
In 2018 Robbinsville signed Matrix 7A at 15% of revenue over eleven years. Six years earlier it had signed the same developer, in the same redevelopment area, at 10% over twenty, and the thirty-year agreements came after 2018.1 So the good terms were not the start of a standard. They were the exception.
Five warehouse tax agreements. Open any of them for the parcel, the ordinance, the term and every audited year. The Amazon agreement also carries the full money flow, because it is the only one whose charge schedule is in the documents.
The warehouse at 50 New Canton Way, about 1,046,520 square feet. The agreement is with KTR NJ Urban Renewal II LLC; Amazon is the tenant and receives nothing under it. The Township’s own auditors label the revenue line “KTR/Amazon”.
| Year | Collected by the Township | Running total | Share of that year’s levy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $260,427 | $260,427 | 0.372% |
| 2015 | $586,333 | $846,760 | 0.825% |
| 2016 | $575,558 | $1,422,318 | 0.790% |
| 2017 | $576,016 | $1,998,334 | – |
| 2018 | $529,197 | $2,527,531 | 0.726% |
| 2019 | $453,932 | $2,981,463 | 0.579% |
| 2020 | $496,215 | $3,477,678 | 0.625% |
| 2021 | $509,334 | $3,987,012 | 0.639% |
| 2022 | $522,654 | $4,509,666 | 0.643% |
| 2023 | $531,009 | $5,040,675 | 0.616% |
| 2024 | $528,210 | $5,568,885 | 0.560% |
| 2025 | $518,032 | $6,086,917 | 0.521% |
| All | $6,086,917 | $6,086,917 | – |
The figures above are what the Township received. They are not what the property paid. To get from one to the other you need the tax on the land, and the credit it earns against the service charge. This is the only agreement whose year-by-year charge schedule we hold, printed as Exhibit 2 of the amending ordinance, so it is the only one that can be followed through.
| Service charge the contract sets for year 12 | $938,884 |
| Tax on the land, billed the ordinary way | $413,353 |
| credited against the charge, not added to it | −$413,353 |
| So the payment in lieu of taxes is the remainder | $525,531 |
| Plus the 2% administrative fee | $18,778 |
| Total out of the developer’s door | $957,662 |
| Schools, their share of the land tax, and nothing from the charge | $228,008 |
| Township, land-tax share, plus 95% of the payment, plus the fee | $595,299 |
| County, land-tax share, plus 5% of the payment | $134,355 |
| Total | $957,662 |
The audited figure for that year is $518,032, and it is the anchor the rest hangs from: 95% of the payment plus the fee. Work backwards from it against the contract schedule and the tax on the land is the only unknown left.
| Year | What the property paid | Where it went | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service charge | Land tax † | PILOT payment † | Admin fee | Total | Schools † | Township † | County † | |
| 2015 | $805,753 | $205,524 | $600,229 | $16,115 | $821,868 | $116,231 | $628,070 | $77,567 |
| 2016 | $818,163 | $229,537 | $588,626 | $16,363 | $834,526 | $129,030 | $621,070 | $84,425 |
| 2017 | $831,764 | $242,942 | $588,822 | $16,635 | $848,399 | $136,137 | $624,820 | $87,442 |
| 2018 | $843,562 | $304,271 | $539,291 | $16,871 | $860,433 | $170,156 | $589,886 | $100,392 |
| 2019 | $856,558 | $396,767 | $459,791 | $17,131 | $873,689 | $222,066 | $532,158 | $119,464 |
| 2020 | $869,755 | $365,734 | $504,021 | $17,395 | $887,150 | $205,261 | $568,471 | $113,418 |
| 2021 | $883,158 | $365,610 | $517,548 | $17,663 | $900,821 | $206,251 | $581,466 | $113,104 |
| 2022 | $896,769 | $365,486 | $531,283 | $17,935 | $914,704 | $204,809 | $596,288 | $113,608 |
| 2023 | $910,592 | $370,806 | $539,786 | $18,212 | $928,804 | $204,841 | $607,334 | $116,629 |
| 2024 | $924,629 | $388,085 | $536,544 | $18,493 | $943,122 | $211,809 | $603,923 | $127,390 |
| 2025 | $938,884 | $413,353 | $525,531 | $18,778 | $957,662 | $228,008 | $595,299 | $134,355 |
| All | $9,579,587 | $3,648,114 | $5,931,473 | $191,591 | $9,771,178 | $2,034,600 | $6,548,784 | $1,187,795 |
One equation, one unknown. The agreement pays the Township 95% of the service charge net of the land-tax credit, plus a 2% administrative fee. The service charge and the fee are printed in Exhibit 2 for all twenty years. The audits print what the Township received. Rearranged, the tax on the land is the only term left:
land tax = (0.95 × service charge + fee − audited receipt) ÷ 0.95
The county and school columns then follow by applying that year’s published tax rates to the land tax. This is arithmetic on documented inputs, not a reading of a tax bill. The assessor’s own figure for Block 41 Lot 14.011 would replace it, and the campaign has asked for it.
What the result implies, and why it is credible. The land value behind these figures climbs from about $7.2M in 2015 to roughly $11.9M by 2020 and is flat since. That is exactly what you would expect of this parcel: the 2013 audit records “KTR/Amazon Rollback Taxes (2011–2013) $650,000”. Rollback taxes are charged when land leaves farmland assessment. The ground under that warehouse was assessed as a farm until it was built, and was revalued to industrial over precisely those years.
One figure here is unresolved. The audits carry a separate “Due to County - 5% Pilots” line that runs at about 9.6% of municipal PILOT revenue, where a 95/5 split implies 5.3%. That affects how the Township and county columns divide between themselves. It does not affect the audited receipts, and it does not affect the school column, which comes from the land tax.
Signed in 2013. For its first eight years it produced almost nothing: $4,232 in 2017, $8,730 in 2018. It did not pass $50,000 until 2021 or $90,000 until 2023.
| Year | Collected by the Township | Running total | Share of that year’s levy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $6,942 | $6,942 | 0.010% |
| 2015 | $16,887 | $23,829 | 0.024% |
| 2016 | $32,609 | $56,438 | 0.045% |
| 2017 | $4,232 | $60,670 | – |
| 2018 | $8,730 | $69,400 | 0.012% |
| 2019 | $8,595 | $77,995 | 0.011% |
| 2020 | $8,202 | $86,197 | 0.010% |
| 2021 | $48,283 | $134,480 | 0.061% |
| 2022 | $85,566 | $220,046 | 0.105% |
| 2023 | $92,112 | $312,158 | 0.107% |
| 2024 | $96,975 | $409,133 | 0.103% |
| 2025 | $99,013 | $508,146 | 0.100% |
| All | $508,146 | $508,146 | – |
Signed alongside 500A in 2013, but no payment appears until 2017, and nothing above $9,000 until 2022. It reached full size only in 2023.
| Year | Collected by the Township | Running total | Share of that year’s levy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $5,040 | $5,040 | – |
| 2018 | $8,938 | $13,978 | 0.012% |
| 2019 | $8,332 | $22,310 | 0.011% |
| 2020 | $7,975 | $30,285 | 0.010% |
| 2021 | $7,993 | $38,278 | 0.010% |
| 2022 | $43,604 | $81,882 | 0.054% |
| 2023 | $73,276 | $155,158 | 0.085% |
| 2024 | $76,238 | $231,396 | 0.081% |
| 2025 | $78,258 | $309,654 | 0.079% |
| All | $309,654 | $309,654 | – |
One of the two lots in the 2018 agreement, billed separately in the audits. Its first payment appears in the 2019 audit at roughly half its later level, which is what a part first year looks like. When the term itself commenced is not in the production.
| Year | Collected by the Township | Running total | Share of that year’s levy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $76,696 | $76,696 | 0.098% |
| 2020 | $124,139 | $200,835 | 0.156% |
| 2021 | $125,555 | $326,390 | 0.158% |
| 2022 | $132,224 | $458,614 | 0.163% |
| 2023 | $135,513 | $594,127 | 0.157% |
| 2024 | $135,781 | $729,908 | 0.144% |
| 2025 | $132,072 | $861,980 | 0.133% |
| All | $861,980 | $861,980 | – |
The second lot of the 2018 agreement. Like its neighbour, its first payment appears in the 2019 audit at about half the level it has held since 2021.
| Year | Collected by the Township | Running total | Share of that year’s levy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $74,879 | $74,879 | 0.096% |
| 2020 | $95,772 | $170,651 | 0.121% |
| 2021 | $98,165 | $268,816 | 0.123% |
| 2022 | $102,783 | $371,599 | 0.127% |
| 2023 | $105,354 | $476,953 | 0.122% |
| 2024 | $105,507 | $582,460 | 0.112% |
| 2025 | $102,478 | $684,938 | 0.103% |
| All | $684,938 | $684,938 | – |
Robbinsville has granted three further commercial tax exemptions that produce no revenue, because the buildings do not exist yet. They are not old agreements that stopped paying. They are new, and they are the ones a sitting council still has a say in.
| Agreement | Ordinance | Parcel | The project | Collected to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AIREIT | 2024-26 | Block 1, Lots 49 & 50 | A flex warehouse of about 59,600 sq ft | nothing |
| Hamilton Development Urban Renewal | 2025-30 | Block 29, Lots 1.18 & 1.19 | A flex warehouse of about 32,004 sq ft, six units | nothing |
| Robbinsville Self Storage Urban Renewal | 2025-32 | Block 29, Lot 2.39 | A self-storage facility of about 91,875 sq ft, 691 units | nothing |
Quoted from the ordinances themselves, obtained from the Township. On the self-storage agreement the ordinance records that the entity “is expected to close on the acquisition of the Project Area shortly and will thereafter construct the Project”.
There is an operating self-storage business on Route 130, and it is not this one. Extra Space Storage runs existing facilities in Robbinsville that have no tax agreement. The exemption above is for a different, unbuilt project on Block 29.
These are small buildings. The Amazon warehouse is about 1,046,520 square feet. Hamilton Development is 32,004, around 3% of it. Nothing here should be read as another Amazon; the point is that the terms are still open.
Every warehouse agreement in Robbinsville, side by side, as audited. This is municipal current-fund revenue: what the Township banked. It excludes the county’s share and excludes the ordinary tax on the land, which is never exempt and is billed separately.
| Year | KTR/Amazon | Matrix 500A | Matrix 500B | Matrix 7A Lot 15.011 | Matrix 7A Lot 15.012 |
Total | Share of the levy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $260,427 | $6,942 | – | – | – | $267,369 | 0.38% |
| 2015 | $586,333 | $16,887 | – | – | – | $603,220 | 0.85% |
| 2016 | $575,558 | $32,609 | – | – | – | $608,167 | 0.84% |
| 2017 | $576,016 | $4,232 | $5,040 | – | – | $585,288 | – |
| 2018 | $529,197 | $8,730 | $8,938 | – | – | $546,865 | 0.75% |
| 2019 | $453,932 | $8,595 | $8,332 | $76,696 | $74,879 | $622,434 | 0.79% |
| 2020 | $496,215 | $8,202 | $7,975 | $124,139 | $95,772 | $732,303 | 0.92% |
| 2021 | $509,334 | $48,283 | $7,993 | $125,555 | $98,165 | $789,330 | 0.99% |
| 2022 | $522,654 | $85,566 | $43,604 | $132,224 | $102,783 | $886,831 | 1.09% |
| 2023 | $531,009 | $92,112 | $73,276 | $135,513 | $105,354 | $937,264 | 1.09% |
| 2024 | $528,210 | $96,975 | $76,238 | $135,781 | $105,507 | $942,711 | 1.00% |
| 2025 | $518,032 | $99,013 | $78,258 | $132,072 | $102,478 | $929,853 | 0.93% |
| All | $6,086,917 | $508,146 | $309,654 | $861,980 | $684,938 | $8,451,635 | – |
Commercial redevelopment agreements only. The audit prints a wider “In Lieu of Tax Payments” subtotal that also contains non-profit payments and, in one year, a separate tax abatement; its composition shifts from year to year, so it is not used here. The FY2017 tax levy sits on a line merged with three other columns in that audit and cannot be read cleanly, so its share is left blank rather than estimated.
The largest agreement is the only one shrinking. KTR/Amazon peaked at $586,333 in 2015 and brought in $518,032 in 2025. Every other line grew.
Two agreements signed in 2013 paid almost nothing for years. Matrix 500A collected $4,232 in 2017 and $8,730 in 2018 before climbing past $90,000. Matrix 500B was near-nil until 2021.
The growth is new agreements switching on, not existing ones paying more. The total rose from $267,369 to roughly $930,000 almost entirely because Matrix 500B and the two Matrix 7A lots began paying.
Five changes, none of which needs Trenton.
Everything above this line is documentation. This part is opinion, and it is labelled that way on purpose. Every one of these could be moved at a council meeting.
If a project genuinely needs twenty or thirty years, the council should have to say so at a public meeting and explain what a shorter term would have cost. The 2018 agreement shows eleven years is a real option, because Robbinsville has already done it.
A school contribution clause, a payment to the district written into the agreement on top of the service charge, is neither required nor prevented by state law. It is purely a question of what the Township asks for, and not one of these agreements has one. At 30% of the charge, across the five that are paying, it would be worth about $521,951 a year. Ask for it at the table, and put the answer in the minutes. If counsel advises it cannot be done, publish that advice.
The percentage-of-taxes floor already exists in every one of these agreements. It is simply switched off until year fifteen or sixteen. Set it at the start and the whole shape changes.
What the Township collects, what the schools collect, what an ordinary bill would have been, and what services the development will need. Every one of those figures already exists in the developer’s application. They are simply never put in front of residents beforehand.
The collections on this page were reconstructed from twelve years of audit exhibits, one PDF at a time. A single annual table would put the same information in front of every resident without the archaeology.
The third of those is the one you can test for yourself. Set a floor, cut the term, and see what the same building would have paid.
Four documents you can open for yourself, plus the audits every figure on this page is taken from.
Township of Robbinsville, production under the Open Public Records Act dated April 12, 2026, together with the ordinances obtained since. The commercial agreements cited here are Ordinances 2012-13, 2012-20, 2013-16, 2013-17, 2018-18, 2024-26, 2025-30 and 2025-32. The twenty-year schedule is Exhibit 2, KTR NJ Urban Renewal II LLC, Estimated Fiscal Plan, attached to the amendment authorised by Ordinance 2012-20.
These are public records, and the campaign will send the full production to anyone who asks.
New Jersey Division of Taxation, 2025 Abstract of Ratables for Mercer County. Robbinsville is line 12: county 0.792, county library 0.074, county open space 0.046, school 1.924, municipal purpose 0.577, municipal open space 0.075, total 3.488. On that rate the school district takes 55.2 cents of every dollar of an ordinary bill, the county 26.1 and the Township 18.7.
nj.gov/treasury/taxation/pdf/lpt/ratables/Mercer2025.pdfNew Jersey Long Term Tax Exemption Law, N.J.S.A. 40A:20-1 et seq. Section 40A:20-3 defines Annual Gross Revenue, Net Profit and Total Project Cost. The revenue percentages, the land tax credit and the staged adjustments are in the individual agreements at Source 1, typically at Sections 4.01, 4.08 and 4.09.
law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-40a/chapter-20/N.J.S.A. 40A:20-12 sets how an annual service charge is divided between the municipality and the county. The school district is not a party to it.
law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-40a/section-40a-20-12/Township of Robbinsville, Report of Audit, fiscal years 2013 to 2025, Exhibit A-2 Statement of Revenues, “Realized” column.
Still outstanding. The assessor’s own figure for Block 41 Lot 14.011, which would replace the derived land tax above. The commencement date written into each financial agreement. And the per-square-foot “Schedule A” floors on two of the three unbuilt agreements, which can only push those charges up, not down.
The audits are published by the Township. The contract schedule is Exhibit 2 of Ordinance 2012-20. Both are available from the campaign on request, and the derived columns are marked so you can tell at a glance which is which.
Every figure on this page comes from a document you can open, or from arithmetic on one. The tax rates are from the New Jersey Division of Taxation. The agreement terms and the Annual Service Charge schedule are from the Township of Robbinsville's own records, obtained under the Open Public Records Act on April 12, 2026, and available from this campaign on request.
If you find an error on this page, tell us and we will correct it in public.