Montana
Two Opposing Views on CI-121 to Fix Montana’s Property Taxes
Constitutional Initiative 121 titled ‘Cap Montana Property Taxes’, faucets into the deep resentment by Montana property homeowners over the fast rise in property values, resulting in what many really feel are unsustainable property taxes.
Congressional candidate Dr. Al Olszewski is a proponent of the initiative.
“Our property taxes is not going to improve by 10, 20 or 30 p.c each different yr,” mentioned Dr. Olszewski. “Reasonably, they’ll solely improve not more than 2 p.c a yr and your property taxes can’t exceed 1 p.c of your property worth. So a home that was value $200,000 would solely be capable of be taxed at a most of $2,000 a yr.”
Dr. Olszewski mentioned the onus can be on the Montana legislature to repair what he referred to as ‘our damaged property tax system’.
“When you learn Constitutional Initiative 121, it merely tells the legislators that they’ve to repair the property tax system,” he mentioned. “You must worth it at what you paid for it or should you’ve owned it for greater than 5 years, what its worth was earlier than the Coronavirus pandemic drove our property costs too excessive.”
One of many opponents of the initiative is State Senator Greg Hertz, who mentioned CI-121 doesn’t deal with all actual property homeowners pretty.
“Everyone’s involved about property taxes in Montana however this Constitutional Initiative 121 is simply not the reply or the answer primarily as a result of it shifts taxes from one taxpayer to a different,” mentioned Hertz.
Hertz supplied examples of why he sees CI-121 as being unfair.
“What is going to occur is that metropolis taxpayers’ share of county and faculty taxes due to the 1 p.c cap will now be shifted to county taxpayers,” he mentioned. “So now impulsively, as a county taxpayer, my taxes are going up, and that is not likely honest. As well as, that metropolis taxpayer will nonetheless be capable of vote on levies to proceed to lift taxes, which might affect my taxes as a county taxpayer.”
Hertz mentioned property tax aid is certainly on the agenda for the subsequent legislative session.
“We have now taxpayer help applications proper now arrange,” he mentioned. “And loads of these, although, are primarily based on previous valuations of when the common worth of the house was about $200,000. So we have to improve that so extra individuals grow to be eligible. And with inflation, we have to improve eligibility limits to as to who qualifies for low revenue. So most certainly we’ll be a few of these surpluses. We have now arrange a pool and going ahead so we are able to relieve the taxes on on these aged and low revenue people.”
KGVO identified to Senator Hertz a KGVO Information story that exposed an almost $400 million surplus from tax revenues wherein Hertz mentioned these monies needs to be returned to the taxpayers. KGVO instructed that the excess may be utilized to rising property taxes.