California transplant Larry Engel hopes they get it right.
"I lived under Proposition 13 for 25 years," Engel said. "My California home sold five years ago for three times what I paid for my home in Sandy. But my Sandy taxes are more than double what I paid on my home in California."
Last year, residents in some areas of Utah got hit especially hard by spiking tax bills due to increased property valuations. Their outcry for reform put pressure on the Legislature to ponder its options.
"We're very pleased with what you're working on," Ron Mortensen told members of the Interim Revenue and Taxation Committee. "We feel you have to get away from this unfair market system we currently have."
Mortensen co-founded citizensfortaxfairness.org and is one of four candidates running for the south Davis County Senate District 23 seat. He advocates that property tax valuations be determined by actual sales price rather than fair market value of similar real estate.
Last fall, some Utah homeowners threatened a tax revolt similar to California's Proposition 13 in 1978. But such a change would require a state constitutional amendment.
One suggestion, put forth by Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, centered on 100 percent property tax deferral for homeowners 65 and older.
"Many elderly are house-rich and cash-flow poor," said Stephenson, who heads the Utah Taxpayers Association. "If we deferred all their property tax and it became a lien on their property until it gets sold, it could relieve a big burden on the elderly."
Stephenson reasoned that the current system simply enriches those "who inherit all that equity."
If home values increase by a modest 3 percent per year, and property tax - roughly 0.8 percent of a house's market value - gets deferred, the actual sellable value of a home never gets reduced, argued Stephenson.
Engel, who like Mortensen favors acquisition-based valuations to relieve the tax burden on retired folks, balked at Stephenson's idea.
"It's nothing but a hidden inheritance tax," Engel said.
cmckitrick@sltrib.com
