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By Wayne Niederhauser
Utah State Senator, District 9

Two significant problems with our current property tax system became apparent in the Revenue and Tax Interim committee on Wednesday. First, there are some deficiencies in the ways that County Assessors are appraising properties. Some counties are doing it better than others, but there definitely needs to be improvement. Our constitution requires that the distribution of the property tax burden be done on a basis of fair market value. There are many who argue that it should be based on acquisition value. While the fair market approach is not perfect, neither is a system based on acquisition value. There are winners and losers under both methods. I suspect that most people will argue for the system that treats them best.

The other problem is the tax revenue increases that taxing entities are implementing through truth-in-taxation. I believe this to be the biggest problem. How we value property only distributes who pays the taxes. It is tax increases that determine the amount. I would like to fix this by requiring taxing entities to take any tax increase above the current years inflation rate to a vote of the people. Truth-in-taxation hearings are not well attended and often misunderstood. However, a vote of the people is more engaging and transparent. With a voting requirement, the people decide whether taxes are increased.

Here are some pictures of Wednesday's hearing. I appreciate all those who attended and shared their point of view.

5 Comments:

 john dougall said...

I believe the third problem is that the cumulative property tax burden is too high for many of our citizens.

It was a beneficial public meeting. The emails were also very informative. Local and State officials became very aware of the public's concern.

There will be many more recommendations for fixing these problems, but Sen. Niederhauser's proposal would be a very important improvement.

9/21/2007 4:26 PM  

 Anonymous said...

What would the outcome look like? I can't imagine many would vote annually in favor of paying more money to the local government. It may take a while to make the connection between how our money is spent by that local government and who picks up our trash, staffs our libraries, patrols the neighborhood, and mows the grass at our parks. What happens in the mean time? More centralized state control to pick up the pieces?

It sounds like a default Prop 13.

9/22/2007 8:44 AM  

 John Dougall said...

Prop 13 is very different. From my perspective, the proposal being more like Colorado's TABOR applied to property taxes. Given government's propensity to spend money, requesting permission from the taxpayer before increasing the tax burden provides greater respect for the taxpayer's property ownership.

9/22/2007 10:21 PM  

 Jeremy said...

Hey State Guys,

Maybe we should implement a similar provision for any state tax or fee increases too! It would be great if citizens had greater ability to second guess you guys since your actually wrong more often than our local governments.

9/23/2007 8:40 AM  

 Anonymous said...

For Rep. Dougall from the above Anon,

I looked at http://www.ncsl.org/programs/fiscal/taborpts.htm to learn a bit more. Are not bonds and Truth in Taxation hearings enough to respect taxpayers' property? Not to mention the ability for taxpayers to throw the bums out each election cycle? TABOR sounds like it could be too volatile to carry us through during Utah's next financial "winter."

9/23/2007 9:08 AM  

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