Just use purchase price for appraisals

There are a host of bills in the Montana Legislature dealing with taxes. One is Sen. Bruce Tutvedt’s SB 157 dealing with property reappraisals. In the past decade thousands of Montanans were caught in the housing bubble and had their property reappraised at significantly higher value only to find that the actual value was hundreds of thousands less than the taxable value. Tutvedt’s bill tinkers with this problem. 

Why not eliminate the problem? Do away with reappraisal altogether.

When you buy property, that price would be the appraised value as long as you own the property. The actual tax you pay could not increase more than 3 percent a year. 

Example: If you buy a property for 200k, that is the appraised value. Twenty years later, when you sell the property for 500k, that is the new appraised value. Gone would be the days when an out-of-state millioniare buys up the property next door, raising the appraised value of your home, and resulting in you getting taxed out of your home. 

Three percent a year would allow for reasonable inflation, and people will know that they aren’t going to be taxed out of the homes they have lived in for many years. —Tom Shaughnessy, Kalispell