Property tax bill is ruinous for some Montanans

Property tax is the most immoral tax of all. It works to confiscate everything you’ve built when you’re most vulnerable; when you’re past your best earning years and well into retirement.

 While many may get reductions in our new tax code, we should not have any form of taxation that spells doom for segments of our citizenry.

Property tax demands payment despite the development of the abyss created from sudden property value increases unaccompanied by any such increase in income. 

It is a tax on an unrealized gain. Other taxes demand from what you can pay — what you spend while purchasing or a percentage of your income. Property tax levies a huge bill regardless of what is in your bank account. You will lose what you thought you owned if you can’t pay. That’s a confiscatory seizure of your property, and it falls hardest on those whose little piece of heaven unexpectedly became coveted by others. 

It is not difficult to see why some consider Montana’s new overly-complicated property taxation as an attack on the people of the lakes. 

I had hoped we would leave Helena with a genuine property tax decrease across the board, but instead we got the great shift. A majority of my constituents are going to get a tax reduction, but others now face ruinous burdens that will drive them from their homes. 

This “cake was baked” before most of us set foot in Helena. Behind the scenes manipulation and what seems an engineered bypassing of the floor rules to dodge sending SB 542 back to appropriations after second reading locked in the final product. The bill was sent directly to third reading despite bearing no fiscal note.

I’ve called for a special session to address those for whom this property tax bill is ruinous. We should allow those who got reductions to keep them, and then freeze the rest at pre-tax bill levels with the difference coming out of the hide of the state government. Unfortunately special sessions are rarities no matter what the reason.

We need to work in 2027 to explore all fair taxation options, and we need a transparent process with no behind the scenes deals. We need to fix the giant hole we are blasting in the people who are bearing the full weight of this tax shift. Let’s ditch the language of envy and the attacks on ‘those rich people’ or people who have two homes — the majority of which are actually residents of Montana — and devise a tax system that is fair to all our citizens. A just and fair system is certainly not what we have now. 

Rep. Tracy Sharp, R-Polson.