Property taxes are top priority of lawmakers

A proposed Utah constitutional amendment that would have changed the way property taxes are calculated has already faltered.

The amendment was one of many approaches the Legislature was going to consider during its upcoming general session to prevent debilitating spikes in property taxes and provide relief for those who suffered such spikes last year. But Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, has abandoned his plan to calculate property taxes based on a three- or five-year rolling average property value.

The proposal, which was endorsed by the Utah County Board of Commissioners, was designed to keep property taxes more steady, especially during years of rapid growth in property values. Stowell, however, said that after some research, he determined that a rolling average wouldn't help the residents who needed it most.

During 2007, properties in Bountiful and Huntsville shot up in value to such a degree that their owners were hit with, in some cases, a 100 percent increase in property taxes.

Stowell asked Salt Lake County Assessor Lee Gardner to run a sample of 18,000 properties in Salt Lake County to see who the winners and losers would be if taxes were calculated on a five-year rolling average.

"The winners were those owning homes in the $500,000 to $700,000 price range," Stowell said. "The big losers were those in the $75,000 to $150,000 price range."

Stowell says that it appears that taxes would shift toward lower-priced properties because there is more interest in expensive properties from buyers who come from outside of Utah.

"I don't think it is a good idea to shift taxes onto the lower-priced properties," Stowell said, adding that a change in property tax law will create a tax shift. "It is a mistake to do anything until one identifies who the losers are and who the winners are."

Some of the most anticipated legislation is coming in the form of HB54, sponsored by Rep. Wayne Harper, R-West Jordan.

Harper's bill requires county assessors of first-, second- or third-class counties — those of 31,000 residents or more — to use a computer-assisted mass-appraisal system to conduct its annual update of property values.

It would require a county assessor to maintain a record of the last appraisal date for each parcel of real property in the county on the county's computer system.

Some areas of Bountiful hadn't been reappraised in a decade, and when values were brought up to market value, the taxes adjusted higher accordingly.