Property tax remains high priority for lawmakers

SHERIDAN — While the Wyoming Legislature was able to get multiple bills aimed toward property tax relief and reform signed into law, the topic remains a priority among lawmakers in the 2024 interim session.

Among the potential solutions proposed during the 2024 budget session and during the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee meeting Tuesday include rolling back assessed values and property tax bills.

For many, the ideal rollback would be to 2020 — the tax year before many property values began skyrocketing in Wyoming as many flocked to the state.

Park County assessor Pat Meyer said his county could roll values back to 2020 and pay all of its bills and suggested reversion apply only to structures on a residential property. Meyer, though, also suggested lawmakers allow individual counties to determine whether to rollback property tax bills, as opposed to making a statewide change.

By rolling back property tax assessments, newer Wyomingites could be faced with significantly higher property tax bills than their longer-term neighbors.

“We heard a lot of testimony during the session about the inequities that that causes,” Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, said.

Meyer suggested Arizona’s property tax model could be one to follow to help prevent broad inequities. The state calculates the market value of a home but uses limited property value to assess property tax. A home’s limited property value can increase by no more than 5% from one tax year to the next and can never exceed the market value of a home.

“If you guys want to keep doing exemptions and trying to get them through every time, they’re Band-Aids,” Meyer said. “This is a solution to the problem of people coming in and paying so much and driving our markets up.”

Gov. Mark Gordon signed three bills designed as exemptions into law from the budget session. Those now-laws exempt any increase over 4% in year-to-year property tax increases, expand the veteran’s tax exemption and offer a 50% exemption to long-term homeowners. A fourth bill signed into law expanded the state’s property tax refund program.

Another potential option discussed during the Joint Revenue Committee meeting — championed by Rep. Mark Jennings, R-Sheridan, in recent years — included acquisition-based property taxes. Doing so would emulate California’s property tax structure.

This method would be another avenue for newer Wyomingites to be faced with a greater tax burden than their neighbors who have lived in the state and owned their homes for more time.

According to a presentation from Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects for Washington, D.C., thinktank Tax Foundation, a Los Angeles home purchased in 1975 would have a property tax bill approximately eight times greater if it had been purchased today.

Acquisition-based property tax was a recurring topic in the months leading up to the 2024 budget session but was ultimately killed by the Joint Revenue Committee in November 2023.

The state hired Florida-based TEAM Consulting to conduct the study on acquisition-based property taxes. Consultants determined Wyoming does not currently have the necessary legal framework to implement acquisition-based property taxes. Ed Crapo — one of the consultants that presented the study to the Joint Revenue Committee in October — said some of the building blocks required would be constitutional amendments, additional staff, revisited statutes and administrative rules.

Jennings said in January acquisition-based property tax would be the reform necessary to alleviate rapidly increasing bills across the state, as opposed to a Band-Aid.

While the committee hasn’t yet requested any draft legislation to provide property tax reform or relief, it is set to continue discussions on the topic throughout the interim session. Any legislation approved by the committee would be up for consideration during the 2025 general session.

This story was published on May 30, 2024.