The administrators at one Ivy League institution seems to think  that “taxes are for the little guy.”

I wonder how their “1-percent” protesting students and faculty who support “Occupy Wall Street” feel about this news item?

Residents and activists in Philadelphia’s West Philly neighborhood, home to the University of Pennsylvania, recently gathered to embarrass the school, calling attention to its refusal to contribute “payment in lieu of taxes” (PILOT) to the city.

That’s a voluntary arrangement with local governments in which institutions that are exempt from property taxes pay for “essential services” they use, “such as police and fire forces and construction on roads,” the Daily Pennsylvanian reports:

Penn was previously involved in a PILOT agreement with the city spanning from 1995 through 2000, but it was not renewed after that period.

Today, Penn and Columbia are the only two Ivies that do not pay PILOT contributions to their local governments.

The PILOT fund fell from $9 million in 1995 to just $687,000 in 2009, in part because of a 1997 state law that gave a “more clearly defined definition of how to obtain tax-exempt status in the act,” the paper said.

Last year “Penn and 11 other area institutions of higher education released a report citing the ways Penn benefits the city financially in other aspects,” the paper said, but one UPenn professor at the neighborhood forum claimed “They vastly overestimate what they contribute” in volunteer time.