Property tax committee may form in interim

The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee unanimously passed a bill Wednesday morning that would create a special committee to study property taxes during the Legislature's interim.

The bill, SB258, sponsored by Sen. Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, appropriates $73,000 to allow senators, representatives and analysts to do some heavy-duty studying this year.

Niederhauser told the Deseret Morning News that he has support for the bill from leadership in both houses of the Legislature.

A committee vote is just the first of many steps before the property tax committee could form for the 2008 interim.

Though property tax legislation was discussed during the 2007 interim, the interim committee's attention was drawn to other pending tax legislation, Niederhauser said.

"We need to spend more time on this," he said. "The property tax policy in this state, I don't think we can just change overnight."

Currently, there are at least 17 bills that deal with various ways of preventing the 2007 property-tax outcry from happening again.

Residents in Bountiful and Huntsville were hit with double-digit increases in their property values and subsequent taxes during 2007, causing local officials and legislators to scramble to find solutions.

Tactics include changing from fair market value to acquisition value, pushing penalties on assessors who don't do their jobs and exempting or deferring taxes for certain groups of people.

Niederhauser said the property tax committee would analyze models to see who the winners and losers are if changes in property tax law are made.

"We hope the public will be educated through that process so we can settle on what is good policy in the state of Utah," he said.

Research has already scrapped one potential reform.

Early on, Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, had suggested creating a 3- or 5-year rolling average at the taxable value for real property, but after analyzing 18,000 parcels in Salt Lake County with Salt Lake County Assessor Lee Gardner, Stowell determined that taxes would shift toward residents in mid to lower-priced homes.

Niederhauser's bill passed the committee without some of the suggestions that came up during Wednesday's meeting.