As part of a state law lowering property taxes but increasing local income taxes, far more school districts are considering raising earned income taxes than levying new personal income taxes.

Whether there will be any change at all will be up to voters in the May 15 primary.

"My prediction was about 20 percent of the districts will have approved referendums. I'm looking at that as a minimum," said David Davare, director of research for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, in a telephone news conference yesterday.

"The bottom line is when you're doing tax shifting, everybody's going to take a look at what this means to them and they're going to vote accordingly on the impact on their wallet," he said.

Renters, for example, would pay more because they won't get a break on property tax. In some areas, senior citizens may object to having their investment income taxed.

Under the law, known as Special Session Act 1 of 2006, each school district had to appoint a tax study commission to make recommendations on how to shift at least part of the tax burden from the property tax.

They had two choices: the earned income tax, which taxes compensation and net profits, or the personal income tax, which taxes compensation, net profits and other kinds of income, such as interest and dividends.

The commissions, whose recommendations were due last month, chose the earned income tax six times as often as the personal one.

Those recommendations now are being considered by school boards, which must authorize the ballot referendums by March 13. This provision does not apply to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Scranton.

With 435 of the state's 501 school districts participating in a survey, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association yesterday reported this tally as of last week:

342 study commissions recommended raising the earned income tax.

54 preferred the personal income tax.

39 recommended making no change.

A majority of districts opting for a new personal income tax would levy it at a rate of 1.05 percent or less. The tax would replace the earned income tax in those districts.

In districts that opted to increase the earned income tax, most kept the increase at 1.05 percent or less. In a district with a current earned income tax of 0.5 percent, a 1.05 percent rate increase would put the new rate at 1.55 percent.

Ultimately, Act 1 calls for some of the property tax relief to come from gambling revenues. But with that revenue currently unavailable, any relief this year will come from tax shifting.

PSBA officials said the tax shifting would be revenue neutral -- while districts are permitted to realize a 2 percent revenue gain from the tax shift, that gain likely would be offset by the costs of collecting the new tax.

In addition to requiring property tax relief, Act 1 limits, using a state index for each district, how much school districts can raise property taxes without a referendum or seeking an exception from the state for certain reasons, including capital projects.

By yesterday, school boards had to have done one of two things: publicly release a preliminary budget for 2007-08 or adopt a resolution saying they won't increase taxes above the index this year. The boards must adopt preliminary budgets by Feb. 14.

While it has not done a thorough survey yet, the PSBA so far has learned of 26 school districts that adopted resolutions to limit any property tax increases to the index.