By Noah Zahn
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

CHEYENNE — Wyoming lawmakers continue to pursue legislation that would create additional property tax breaks, including the possibility of eliminating property taxes completely.

Bill drafts were discussed Thursday and Friday while community members testified that they want to keep the taxes, saying it’s what keeps Wyoming communities thriving.

Property taxes in Wyoming fund a wide array of public services, including education, law enforcement, fire rescue, and city and county services like park maintenance, garbage collection and snow removal.

As a result of the property tax breaks signed into law over the past two years, the city of Casper lost around $1.8 million in revenue, Casper City Council member Amber Pollock said when the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee met last week.

She said this resulted in loss of funding for half of the city’s seasonal staff positions and four full-time positions, as well as a reduction of irrigation and snow plowing services. Pollock said the city handled the loss in revenue as well as it could, but is unsure what things would look like going forward if lawmakers continue to roll out more tax breaks.

Casper resident Laurie Longtine expressed concern with what tax cuts would mean for the community amenities she has enjoyed most of her life as a Wyoming resident, including parks, libraries, the senior center and the cemetery, where her nephews are buried.

“The proposed legislation endangers all those community services and amenities, as well as the things that hardworking families in Wyoming take for granted,” she said.

Nate Martin, executive director of Better Wyoming, a community organizing and advocacy group, said politicians have used property tax cuts as a political platform to promise voters free money in the form of lower taxes.

“Some people’s property taxes have gone up. Some are going up a lot. Others, not so much. The Legislature, as many of you know, responded by passing a series of targeted, specific measures to provide property tax relief. And then something shifted,” he said.

Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, said he took offense to the shift Martin referenced, implying politicians’ use of property tax cuts as a way to win votes.

“I would challenge any of you to run for the Legislature and come tackle this monster,” he said. “If you treat us like we don’t care, but I’m telling you, we do, and we’re not looking at tax cuts. We’re looking at changing it the way it’s done.”

 

Finding new revenue

The biggest question concerning the continued tax cuts or potential elimination of property taxes is where municipalities and counties would get revenue to fund public services.

The Revenue Committee was slated to discuss the bill that would end statewide property taxes Friday, but ultimately withheld discussion to continue working on the bill draft at its next meeting in November.

It is unclear whether the new revenue sources would come from increased sales taxes, implementation of an income tax in Wyoming or somewhere else.

Wyoming already has the 13th-lowest property tax rates in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, and several studies show that sales taxes are regressive, placing a larger financial burden on lower-income individuals and families.

On Friday, Jennifer McDowell, a Casper-based attorney, explained how further property tax cuts could have a significant impact on families.

“As income goes down, the percentage of a family’s income that goes toward retail purchases increases. It’s just basic math,” she said. “… If there’s a 2% increase that causes $100 increase in your overall grocery bill, that $100 increase is going to impact someone who only makes $10,000 a year a lot more than someone who makes $100,000.”

She said Wyoming had the second-lowest effective tax rate on individuals in the nation, at 7.5%, and Wyoming ranks fourth-lowest in property taxes paid as a percentage of home value, even including Teton County.

According to the Wyoming Department of Revenue, the three property tax exemptions already in place will result in $196 million less available for services provided to Wyoming residents in 2025. Two of those exemptions are for long-term homeowners and residents who live on their Wyoming property for at least eight months a year.

On Friday, the Revenue Committee discussed bills that would eliminate the eight-month residency requirement and another that would remove the sunset date for the long-term homeowners tax exemption, which applies to people over age 65 who have paid property tax in Wyoming for at least 25 years.

Dixie Huxtable, Converse County’s assessor, testified that there is no way for her to tell whether people are being truthful when identifying how many months they lived in their Wyoming property each year. When they are filling out their tax documents, she must trust their word.

Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, urged the committee to think about who the tax cuts are harming the most.

“What this committee has failed to do, I think, is look at who’s paying which taxes in the state,” she said.

When discussing the potential elimination of all property taxes, she said, “I think that is a significant shift from the upper class to the lower class. And despite the fact that the 25% cap is limited to a million dollars (in property value), the 4% cap on increases is what my constituents, my wealthy constituents, especially, are benefiting from, and that is $400 million in assessed value that’s no longer coming into the county or the state to pay for schools across the state.”

She said an average home in the state is valued at around $500,000. With the existing tax breaks, that property owner gets a break of $335. But for properties valued over $10 million, those property owners are getting a tax break of more than $13,000, she said.

 

Other tax cuts

The committee discussed those two bills Friday and tabled a decision on whether to sponsor them until their meeting in November.

Also on Friday, the committee discussed two other bills.

One seeks to change the confidentiality of statements of consideration for property transfers, making them public records starting July 1, 2026. 

The change aims to increase transparency in property valuations, granting taxpayers and their agents greater access to comparable sales data when challenging their property tax assessments. The bill also amends the timeline for filing assessment contests, extending it from 30 to 45 days, and clarifies the information exchange requirements between the county assessor and the appealing party.

The other bill proposes changes to how residential real property is taxed, specifically by amending definitions and assessment rates. The bill introduces a new, lower taxable value of 8.3% for residential real property, distinguishing it from the 9.5% rate applied to all other property. It also defines “residential real property” as a dwelling for up to three families, including associated land and primary residences like single-family homes or condominiums.

Both bills will be discussed further in November.

There were three more bills the committee did not discuss and assigned lawmakers to work on until the November meeting before a final decision.

This included one that would effectively eliminate property taxes in the Cowboy State, and two that would base property taxes on acquisition value, or the value when the property owner bought it, rather than fair market value, which is currently the case in places like California.

On Thursday, Martin urged the committee to think about who these tax cuts are impacting.

“They’re homeowners, they’re taxpayers, they’re voters, and they’re people who recognize that the conversation about property taxes at the Legislature has become dishonest and reckless, and there are people who recognize that the consequences of cutting property tax, the services that benefit all of our communities that depend on property taxes, have consequences, and those services are not free,” he said.

At the end of public comment Thursday, Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, thanked those who came to share their opinions, noting it is the opposite of what he has heard from his constituents who are asking for property tax relief.

“There’s two sides of the population here. For those of you who said, ‘Hey, you know what? We’re going to pay our taxes, the full amount,’ that’s awesome. That’s great,” he said. “By the same token, I understand we’re concerned about local services, so we are very conscious of that.”