EDITORIAL: Polis’ property tax relief is a ruse. ( Colorado )

Gazette editorial board ^ | 5/3/2023 | Gazette editorial board

[george76]

Suppose someone offers to help you pay your bills — then reaches into your pocket, grabs your wallet, pulls out some money and hands it to you. That’s more or less what Gov. Jared Polis and his Democratic allies who run the Legislature have in mind in promising “relief” for Coloradans facing skyrocketing property taxes.

Unveiled by the governor at a Monday news conference and introduced the same day in the Legislature as Senate Bill 23-303, the complicated proposal would ask voters on next November’s statewide ballot to pay for a large part of their own property-tax relief.

That’s right; while the proposal would lower the state’s assessment rate slightly for residential and commercial property for the next decade, it would offset the cuts partly by tapping taxpayers’ pending refunds of revenue the state expects to collect this fiscal year in excess of state constitutional limits on government growth. The measure also would ask voters to raise those limits in future years, allowing the state to keep another 1% that will compound annually.

Which means money that was supposed to be returned to the public instead will be used to make up for marginally lower property taxes.

Some of the purported property-tax relief also would hinge on a new, local property-tax cap that would limit year-to-year revenue increases for local government to the rate of inflation. Yet, school districts — which typically consume most of a homeowner’s property-tax bill — would be exempt from the cap. And other local governments could simply notify property-tax payers of their intention to exceed the cap, and they could keep all the revenue they collect.

If it’s starting to sound a lot like you were invited out to dinner and then got stuck with the tab, you’re getting the gist.

To put it politely, the Polis plan is largely an illusion — in response to the very real, and dramatic, surge in property tax bills that’s coming next spring. It follows a decision by Colorado voters in 2020 to eliminate the state constitution’s longtime hedge against such increases in homeowners’ property taxes. The so-called Gallagher amendment had served as a check on rising property tax bills for decades by limiting total revenue government could derive from residential property taxes. With Gallagher gone —and property values soaring across the state — taxes are expected to shoot up as much as 50% for Colorado homeowners.

Keep in mind that even Polis doesn’t claim his plan comes close to offsetting the leap in property tax liability for Colorado homeowners since Gallagher was repealed. In its best light, the plan merely lowers the amount of the increase. And it does so to a great extent by using money taxpayers otherwise would be entitled to get back, redirecting it to local governments that presumably would lose some revenue when the statewide assessment rate is lowered.

Only a one-time appropriation of $128 million, in the plan’s first year, is budgeted out of the state’s current revenue to pay for that backfill to local governments. A far greater amount — some $1.8 billion in just the first three years — would come from new revenue the state would get to keep instead of giving it back.

A far more sustainable, substantial and fair approach would be simply to cap year-to-year increases in residential and commercial property tax bills.

A pending proposal by advocacy group Advance Colorado, for example, would limit increases in property tax bills to 3% a year. If the citizens initiative gathers enough signatures from registered voters, it would appear on the same ballot alongside the legislature’s handiwork.

Then, the voting public would have a chance to show the governor how you really spell relief.

[dynachrome]

Cause the problem. “Solve” the problem. Get votes.

[Herodes]

I live in California. One large family on our street has just moved to a community outside of Denver.

I call that a “win-win”...

[Still Thinking]

If the real limit mentioned at the end is enacted, its important that the base be taken from the pre-skyrocket period or its locking the barn after the horse has exited.

[george76]

TABOR ( state constitution ) requires excess state tax revenue must be refunded to the taxpayers , the left will re-label it as some sort of property tax relief.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4150183/posts

[Bon of Babble]

Where's Howard Jarvis when you need him?

Prop 13 (California):

The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing values at their 1976 value and restricted annual increases of assessed value to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2% per year. It prohibits reassessment of a new base year value except in cases of (a) change in ownership, or (b) completion of new construction. These rules apply equally to all real estate, residential and commercial—whether owned by individuals or corporations.

We in California already have the highest gas tax, income and sales tax in the nation. If not for Prop 13, we'd have the highest property taxes as well. The super-majority Democrats have been trying to eliminate it or work around it since the 70s.