05-02-2025
How much is Mayo Clinic paying in property taxes?
Feb. 4—Dear Answer Man: I am aware that the Mayo Clinic plays a significant role in the city of Rochester, from patient care and research to education and employer. I assume some of Mayo holdings qualify as nonprofit status, and hence are exempt from property taxes, just as churches and other nonprofits. Do you know what percentage of Mayo Clinic properties qualify as nonprofit status? — Property Tax Hawk.
Dear Tax Hawk,
Yeah, we're talking about a lot of money. And it's not as if Mayo Clinic pays zero property taxes in Olmsted County. In fact, Mayo pays millions upon millions of property taxes in Rochester and beyond.
But it's safe to say some of the organization's major properties are tax-exempt, including Saint Marys, the Plummer Building and Methodist Hospital.
So, before we get started, we're going to have a little primer on property taxes and what you're looking at here. Answer Man is going to give you not an apples-and-oranges comparison, but an apples-and-last-year's apples comparison.
So, the most recent property value assessments were from 2024. The taxes paid on those assessments — or estimated market values — will be made in 2025. Obviously, those payments have not been made yet, because it's barely February, so I'll show the payments made in 2024 on the 2023 estimated values.
While this is apples-and-last-year's-apples, the estimated values generally don't change much — if at all — from year to year.
That said, with no further adieu, here's some the valuations and taxes paid on some of the more valuable and popular Mayo Clinic properties.
* Mayo Clinic Hospital Saint Marys: Estimated value, $346,355,500. No property taxes.
* Gonda Building: Estimated value, $192,562,100. 2024 taxes paid, $5,446,202.
* Mayo Building: Estimated value, $119,685,500. 2024 taxes paid, $3,366,440.
* Baldwin Building: Estimated value, $28,923,400. 2024 taxes paid, $844,816.
* Plummer Building: Estimated value, $1,831,600. 1,831,600. No property taxes.
The Mayo Clinic Hospital Methodist Campus is actually made up of two dozen individual taxable parcels. Rather than list them all, Answer Man did the math on them. The estimated value for 2024 (which will be payable in 2025) for all the parcels is $246,573,800, but the entire property — much like Saint Marys — is tax-exempt, so zero taxes were paid.
Not all Mayo Clinic properties are downtown. The Mayo Family Clinic Northeast has an estimated value of $6,199,800, and in 2024 Mayo Clinic paid $179,760 in property taxes.
There's the three-building group just west of U.S. Highway 52 at 41st Street Northwest:
* Mayo Family Clinic Northwest (also home of the Mayo Clinic Northwest Blood Donor Center, Department Of Physical Medicine And Rehabilitation): Estimated value, $9,128,600. 2024 base taxes, $97,124.
* Mayo Clinic Study of Aging: Estimated value, $11,429,300. 2024 base taxes, $298,112.
* Supply Chain Solutions developed by Mayo Clinic: Estimated value, $10,877,000. 2024 base taxes, $293,242.
Out along West Circle Drive are other Mayo facilities such as at 3050 Superior Drive NW (Mayo Clinic Laboratories and Mayo Superior Drive Support Center), which has an estimated value of $47,425,000 and paid 2024 taxes of $1,212,808. Another Mayo property is at 4001 41st St. NW (Mayo Support Center South) with an estimated value of $31,486,800. Mayo paid $919,840 in property taxes there.
This doesn't even include such properties as the Mayo Clinic urgent care facilities in town, or Mayo Clinic hospitals and clinics in Cannon Falls, Red Wing, Kasson, Austin or Albert Lea.
Now, within Olmsted County, Mayo Clinic — in its many entity names — owns 216 tax parcels. Of those, 168 are tax exempt either in part or in full. And some of those parcels — say the two dozen that make up the one entity we think of as Methodist Hospital — might be counted individually by the county, but are really, for all intents and purposes, one business entity, according to the fine folks at the Olmsted County Property, Records, and Licensing team.
All that makes answering the percentage question somewhat problematic. Still, based on those numbers 78% of Mayo Clinic properties in Olmsted County have some level of tax-exempt status for paying property taxes.
That probably sounds like a lot. But again, for many of these parcels, only part of the property is tax exempt. Futhermore, May Clinic is the No. 1 payer of property taxes in dollars in Olmsted County, so it's not like Mayo isn't doing its part to fund the schools, county services, and more.
The important question here is this: Is Mayo Clinic paying the taxes it is legally responsible for paying? Well, I haven't read every tax document and article of incorporation, but Mayo has a team of lawyers who make sure the health care institution stays on the right side of the law, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes.
So, what about those huge properties — Saint Marys and Methodist, mainly — where Mayo Clinic pays no property taxes?
Well, those are hospitals.
Hospitals — and this is true across the country — generally don't pay property taxes because, well, you want a hospital to be located in your community. Especially one that is a nonprofit organization.
So, how much does Mayo Clinic pay in local property taxes? Well, just on the properties above, Mayo paid $11,969,866 in 2024. That's not spare change.
Don't tax your brain. Send questions to Answer Man at answerman@ .
