Your new tax bill

By now most Montana homeowners and business owners have gotten a new and unexpected tax bill from their county treasurers. Here’s why.

Due in equal parts to Covid-19 and to the TV series “Yellowstone,” Montana real estate became a hot item and the value of Montana property was bid way up in the process. Out-of-state buyers were calling up Montana Realtors and buying homes and acreage sight unseen and paying for properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with their credit cards. This increased the appraised value of Montana homes because, even if they weren’t for sale, they were worth more on paper. 

In an effort to spare property taxpayers from having to pay the state of Montana an increased tax that goes to support K-12 education throughout the state and, also, I suspect, to defray the expected fury of irate taxpayers seeing sky-high tax bills, the Montana Association of Counties recommended that the counties reduce the statewide mills from 95 to 77.9 to defray the unintended windfall to the state.