Popular property tax relief bill could aid Teton County
JACKSON — Teton County has a lot to gain from what’s shaping up to be the most popular property tax bill in Wyoming’s most conservative Legislature in recent history.
House Bill 99 would allow more people to apply for an existing state-funded property tax refund program while putting several million dollars more into that program. Counties could fund their own version of a refund program under the same rules.
The biggest change brought by HB 99 is that the refund program would be open to applicants who make up to 125% of their county's or the state's income, whichever is higher. In Teton County that means a qualifying household could make up to $128,386 a year, up from about $77,000 last year when the cutoff was 75% of median county income.
HB 99 also would give applicants the chance for a greater maximum refund of their property taxes — 90%, up from 50%.
To qualify, people must have lived in Wyoming for at least five years, live in their house for at least nine months a year and each adult have less than $150,000 in certain assets, raised from $133,000.
In 2022, the median property tax bill in Teton County was $8,485, a 32% spike from 2021. The next-highest median bill in 2021 was Park County at $2,279.
The bill passed third reading in the House unanimously last week, 62-0, its popularity stemming from the fact that it would affect households this year; it's focused on people who are low and middle income; and avoids direct cuts to public and local-level budgets.
HB 99 heads to the Senate Travel, Recreation and Wildlife Committee with a successful amendment from strange bedfellows.
Freshman Rep. Liz Storer, a Teton County Democrat, came into the session with an idea for a “circuit breaker” tax policy that would help people whose tax burden is more than a set percentage of their income. This tool exists in 18 other states, she said.
On the floor of the House last Thursday, Storer told the story of a recently retired couple she spent an hour with after knocking on their door canvassing in a middle-class neighborhood south of town.
The couple — who did not wish to be identified in the paper — bought their home in the 1980s and built up a modest “nest egg,” which Storer later said was about $1 million. Meanwhile, their home value doubled to be about $1.5 million and their property taxes shot up to $9,000, which amount to about 20% of their fixed retirement income of approximately $45,000 per year.
“They’ve saved and scrimped and sacrificed,” Storer later told the News&Guide. Tax policies should target people like that, she said, “but we didn’t want to open the floodgates too much.”
Knowing that tax relief in her infamously expensive home county has not been a traditionally inspiring poster child in Cheyenne, Storer teamed up with Rep. John Bear, chair of the far-right Wyoming Freedom Caucus, to give that idea life in an amendment to HB 99.
Bear told the House on the floor that the amendment also would help small business owners across the state. The two sit together on the House Revenue Committee where HB 99 was first heard.
Though Teton County has the state’s richest residents by a long shot, the median property tax as a percentage of income in 2022 — or tax burden — was 8.26%, nearly three times that of the next-closest county, Park, whose median tax rate over median income was 3.6%.
Out of all 50 states, Wyoming's average property tax burden ranks among the 10th lowest in the country, but it’s still “upside down," because poorer households pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy's 2018 study, its latest, ranked Wyoming among the top 10 states with the most regressive tax policy, hurting poor people most.
The Storer and Bear amendment means that people whose tax bill exceeds 10% of their income could have more than $150,000 in savings and still qualify, granted they meet the other requirements.
Technically, people who have a trust fund and don't work also potentially could qualify for a refund, Storer said, like a young "trust fund" adult who doesn't work. But the amendment does target those with "nest egg" retirement savings.
Teton County Assessor Melissa Shinkle sees up close how property taxes overburden middle- and low-income people in Teton County.
“I’m really excited that HB 99 is going through as well as it is,” Shinkle said.
In Teton County, the state approved 138 applications for the refund program in 2021. The average refund was $1,895. Park County had the next-highest refund average, at $687.
Many who applied for the program weren’t approved — 30% across the state in 2021, according to the Department of Revenue. That's up from 11% in 2019.
In Teton County, of the 177 people who applied for the program in 2021, 39 fell outside the income limit and were rejected, Shinkle said.
“I think [HB 99] will capture more people, absolutely," she said.
This tax year, Teton County homeowners also have access to $2 million in a nearly identical county refund program, set aside by county commissioners last year after cries from constituents to do whatever possible to help people who might have to sell their house to pay their taxes.
While HB 99 is progressing with stunning support, it still has a big hurdle to clear in passing the Senate before heading to Gov. Mark Gordon to be signed into law.
HB 99 will begin its journey in the Senate Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, not the Revenue Committee.
Sen. Mike Gierau, a Teton County Democrat and longtime advocate for more property tax relief from the state level, sits on the Travel Committee. Its members tend to be more moderate than the Revenue committee.
HB 99 is just one of about 24 original property tax-related bills this session, a high share for one subject of the nearly 500 total bills. Other bills take aim at a long-term restructuring of the tax landscape.
On Tuesday, the House moved a bill forward that would give the Legislature more flexibility over residential taxes.
But since that tax strategy is set in stone by the state Constitution, residents only would see change years down the line, if a majority voted in the next general election to approve a constitutional amendment.
Out of seven property tax-related bills introduced on the Senate side, only two made it to the House.
The most fiery property tax debate in the Senate so far has happened around Senate File 136, which would reduce the assessment rate for the “all other property” tax class, which includes residential, agricultural and commercial properties.
The bill would cut the tax rate for those classes from 9.5% to 8.5% without backfilling the estimated millions that would be lost by the tax collectors: largely schools, counties, towns and special districts.
After passing the Senate 18-12 on third reading, SF 136 goes to the House with mixed reviews from lawmakers because that tax rate has been fixed since 1989 and most of the collection goes to fund Wyoming’s public schools, with a smaller share going to municipalities and special districts.
The bill's sponsor, Sen. Bo Biteman, a Sheridan County Republican, said the bill would be the “easiest and quickest” way to cut taxes. But Senate President Ogden Driskill called SF 136 “bad tax policy” because he said it would give breaks to people with $10 million houses, for example.
The bill gives everyone an equal rate reduction, no matter their income.
Also passed to the House and now referred to the House Revenue Committee is Senate Joint Resolution 3 — "Property tax exemption for the elderly and infirm," brought by Teton County Sen. Dan Dockstader, an Afton Republican, and Rep. Andrew Byron, a Hoback Republican.
Instead of enacting policy, the joint resolution is aimed at putting muster behind a future fix. The resolution calls for voters in the next general election to decide if the state Constitution should be amended to allow the Legislature to make laws “as it determines necessary to preserve home ownership for the elderly and infirm if necessary for the support of the poor.”
This story was published on Feb. 8, 2023.
