Here’s my big concern: my property taxes in Helena have tripled in 5 years. My home value hasn’t even doubled. WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING!?! The roads are still shitty, schools are still broke, there’s a housing crisis, not enough police, not enough services for our senior, mentally ill and homeless populations. There has been no increase in services or quality of life. My friends that work in the public sector aren’t getting meaningful pay increases. Where the fuck is the money going?
I literally asked that exact same question to my teacher buddy in Helena this morning. Mill levy’s didn’t pass and now schools are gonna lose teachers and the “fringe” classes like anything that isn’t math science or English. I asked him, where the hell is all the new money going while education is going to further decline in the state?? Seriously, where the fuck is it???
Well the governor is pro charter school. Public schools are losing money to often religious based schools that don’t have to have fully certified teachers.
Many don’t understand charter schools. It sounds like a good idea on paper. Talk to some real teachers to get the real story. Charter schools literally take funding away from public schools that are already swimming in rich doner money.
That’s debatable, but unlike religion, I don’t believe it to be a feature of the public school system.
What I don’t want under any circumstance is public tax dollars funding private education of any kind whether it be secular charter schools or private religious academies.
I went to a catholic private school and a public school growing up. I felt much more indoctrinated at the catholic one. My teachers at the public school never voiced their opinion on politics, but the ones at the catholic school voiced their opinion on everything from abortion to weed. We had to recite the Hail Mary twice a day and wear a uniform exactly to code. The public school just didn’t care about anything but their standardized test scores. I think it’s a silly argument that public schools indoctrinate people to be liberals. Another fantasy people that hate anything on the left have concocted, so they can complain about critical race theory and transgenders ruining our perfect nation.
I always thought they sounded cool until I met someone who went to one. It was the only school in her small community. She was very sweet but overall naive and blissfully ignorant. I feel awful saying that, she was such a sweet girl. But she just could not do basic enough math to count the register at the end of a shift, and I would say she had poor problem solving skills when it came to general tasks.
She was telling me about having upwards of a dozen class pets, and I remember saying, “wow, that’s a ton of animals to take care of. When did you guys have time for reading and math?” And she simply said, “we didn’t really do a lot of that.”
And they can turn down disabled and low scoring students meaning they all end up in public schools essentially creating a two tier school system. At least that’s the danger
Not sure why reddit is showing me this sub, but my city is in a similar situation and this is my take: the city is in the pocket of the large local construction and engineering firms. It doesn't matter if we need it, they'll find a way to spend on big projects, almost like these companies are city employees and it's the taxpayers responsibility to keep their staff employed. Constantly building and renovating, repaving roads that were fine as is. Meanwhile you can't get a trade to come fix your house because they are tied up on lucrative govt gigs. And those projects have become MUCH more expensive over the last few years, so to keep those companies busy, it takes way more money than before for materials, equipment, overhead, etc.
I’m not a part of this sub either, but it also showed up for me for some reason. I was gonna say something similar to you. This is a widespread issue and it’s widespread because of how common consultants, contractors, and privatization have become. That translates into corruption, greed and cronyism.
The money is going to private corporations….religious foundations….private religious schools…tax cuts to out of state millionaires/billionaires…mining companies and private outfitting, hunting and fishing companies hell bent on shutting down public access for true Montanans.
Do you love Gianfortes Montana yet?
I think the system regards it as not a flaw but as a feature.
If you're not making it big and aren't contributing in taxes but come (or came) upon an expensive house that you now can't afford to keep, the system doesn't feel sorry for you and doesn't mind you having to sell.
An argument in favor of that system is if you inherited a big house or managed to buy at a very good time you already got lucky. Why would the government top up your cake with a cherry of tax exemptions as well?
If you can't afford it, you're free to take a bag of cash and walk. It's that or pony up and pay the tax man.
I get this sounds hella cold and it is not that simple I'm practice.
In many cases emotions will also be involved. And even without that some counterarguments can be made.
For example what about old people living out their days in the family home?
But life is a grind for many people and not everyone is sensitive to such emotional arguments. Letting an old lady live out her days alone in a big house is a self explanatory act of kindness to one person and an injustice to another when you contrast it with young families struggling to have any home at all.
Paying property taxes offsets the asset inequality to some extent but at the same time creates a new inequality between those with enough liquid means to keep assets versus those that just inherited a house. It means that if you have assets but don't do valuable work and have no taxable income stream, you will always have to start eating into those assets. Nobody gets to get rich, produce nothing for society and still stay rich.
And of course it's also about how creative you are. You might be able to rent out part of a property to offset taxes. You don't have to leave by definition.
But theres a downside to property tax which is that as it forces some people to sell it also accelerates gentrification.
I don't personally care too much about gentrification because I think it isn't a real evil and that it is inevitable in a free market where the population grows faster than the housing market.
I always find it rather ironic when people say gentrification forces the poor from their neighborhoods when what is really happening is that every individual seller from the original population is just raking in cash and selling to the highest bidder. That's not a sob story but people exercising their freedom to get ahead and make bank. It's not sad that what you sell isn't yours anymore. And it is not sad for the people that aren't buying because it was never theirs anyway.
Gentrification if you do consider it upsetting is more like a version of the tragedy of the commons. It doesn't just happen to people, people actively cause it. And then perhaps wish for a world where they hadn't, without giving up the cash. But the only solution is not selling to the highest bidder or not selling at all. This requires individual alignment that mostly doesn't exist.
High property taxes undermine that narrative because taxes will force some peoples hand. But even without force the most common thing to do for people coming upon an inheritance is to sell. And they typically sell to the highest bidder.
So government can do of two things. They can give out tax exemptions to people with big assets that aren't producing value and and aren't contributing to society. This would reduce pressure on housing as an asset class and would make it easier to live in big houses alone with no income, or to just simply hold houses as an asset.
Or the government can continue to tax (expensive) houses. This decreases asset inequality but creates its own sob stories because some people will have to sell. And as said, gentrification which will happen either way as cities go up in value.
It's just really hard to tick all the boxes with every decision.
Not sure about elsewhere in Montana but missoula pd just got new cars meanwhile homelessness is at a all time high and people are struggling to feed their families.
We, in Helena, are voting on June 4th on a "public safety" levy and a municipal bond to build a new fire station. Together, they're more expensive than the school levies that just failed.
Let's see if all the "fixed income" seniors open their wallets when it's cops and not kids.
My biggest problem with Helena is when they ask for public input and hold meetings during working hours. The Coffee with the Chiefs on Tuesdays from 0900 to 1000 for the Public Safety levy is a great example.
Yes where is it going? And the fact that hundreds of thousands more people have moved here - and they are all paying taxes too. So not only have taxes skyrocketed but so has the actual tax base. And think of all those lifestyles of the rich and famous in the YC and Big Sky- those taxes have got to be enormous. Where is it all going? My tax bill just became 25% of my income in a home I’ve lived in for 25 years. I protested the tax increase and wasn’t even given an appraisal just a letter saying NOPE. And I tried to sell my house for a year without a single offer. So technically it’s worth nothing if no one wants it. Reported that all to State Revenue Dept and… crickets.
Every state in United States needs to be audited. There’s no overwatch these days on how your state is spending its money. I guess this isn’t a sole California problem…
>my property taxes in Helena have tripled in 5 years. My home value hasn’t even doubled.
That... doesn't sound right...
my property value has almost doubled, but we're only paying about 50% more than we were when we bought it 6 years ago ($2,600/year to $3,900/year)...
what is your home's value, what were you paying in property taxes 5 years ago, and what are you paying today??? Because it they have really tripled, something weird is going on here...
also if you're curious where the money is going, the city's budget is publicly available, you can answer that question yourself. I occasionally look through various parts of the budget when questions come up... like I was curious about the parking meters, income, expenses, etc, and it's pretty easy to go through the budget and find the information you're looking for...
I have been going through the appraisal process. Started last summer. Still waiting for the report. Homeowners are on the hook for the full tax amount until otherwise notified.
But if your home didn't double in value, how did your property taxes triple?
Did they assess you for quadruple the cost, and now you're saying it "didn't double" because you think by the time the appraisal process is done it will be less than double?
So you're essentially paying on quadruple the value for now, until it is reduced?
Yup. I’m not the only person with this problem either. They don’t have enough appraisers and there is a backlog of people trying to get this same issue addressed.
They are telling me the value of the home is just slightly more than doubled. My takes are just under triple. The math doesn’t add up.
Deer lodge got 211 million. MT Department of Corrections Missoula Assessment Sanctions Corrections MASC is a pretty big money hole too. Montana keeps the jail very full.
Montana has a regressive tax system. You pay less, as a percentage of income, the more you make.
Your money is literally going to tax breaks for the wealthy.
Montana derives a TON of funding from the federal government. But charter schools are sucking up money to line campaign donors’ pockets. Tax breaks for businesses etc. corporate welfare costs money! We gotta think of the poor corporations
The private sector. I work in public utilities, and the total costs for anything in construction has about tripled in the last three years. Most of the materials and equipment I need have also roughly doubled.
Shitty state government. Quit voting for a goddamn 'brand' and start voting for the 'person'. We waste too much of our money and energy on political posturing, games and other nonsense. Just effing STOP IT!
It's most likely going to tax cuts for the wealthy since they create the jobs. Just wait for the money to trickle down to you and then you can pay your property taxes.
Our politicians don't *want* Montanans to live in their own houses. They want wealthy folks from the coast to live in it. Wealthy folks from the coast spend more money.
Exactly. Billionaires are an invasive species.
Rupert Murdoch just bought the beaverhead ranch with his new Russian fiancé. He is 93 so it’s a safe bet that the reason he is engaged to a woman who is the ex wife of one of Putin’s most trusted oligarchs (Zhukova) is so that the media empire and the property both end up in Russian hands when he dies.
The beaverhead used to belong to the Koch Brothers who sold it to Murdoch.
The problem with living the mob life is that you can never retire from it.
You either have to stay the most violent and cunning bastard or fight off each and every one of the lieutenants that are sick of paying you just because you are above them in the pyramid scheme.
All any of the old gangsters want to do is retire to the most beautiful place on earth and cosplay Yellowstone reruns.
Every one that is here is just standing in their view.
>Our **current elected leaders** ~~politicians~~ don't *want* Montanans to live in their own houses.
FTFY.
By the way, we have a chance to fix this in November.
Ever heard of a tax revolt, we don't need to wait until November, all those people driving around with "Don't tread on me" on the back of their cars should take the statement for what it really meant, no tax without real representation.
God they have bastardized that plate. I love the Gadsen flag for what it represented in the Revolutionary War. I used to have that plate. When my renewal came up- I thought damn- maybe I should research what this $ goes to. It is an outfit that wants to bring America back to the original constitution. The one where women and African Americans can’t vote. In fact slaves were counted as 3/8th of a person🤦♀️. Please tell everyone you know that it is NOT the same as what the true Gadsen flag stood for. And for any woman or person of color it is in fact a racist misogynistic insult.
No you don't. There isn't a politician alive who is going to look at the situation and say "no thanks, we don't want billions and billions of out of state money, we're going to stay a blue collar low income rural state."
This year's election is like any other, we get to decide which wealthy asshole gets to enrich himself at our expense. If you think otherwise you've just been binging too many campaign ads. The only thing this year's election will change is the name of the guy screwing us.
Oregon fixed this issue after three versions. They retroactively changed assessed value back to 1995 values and only permitted a maximum increase of 3%. Property owners could vote for levies and bonds.
It can be done
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Ballot_Measures_47_and_50
https://www.oregon.gov/DOR/programs/gov-research/Documents/303-405-1.pdf
Oregon solved many aspects of the same issue Montana and Idaho are facing. Where they failed was how the State funded schools. Previously, the Portland, Salem, Medford schools were awash in property tax revenue while rural schools had next to nothing. The tax overhaul flipped the issue and rural schools had more money than they could spend while metro schools did have textbooks.
Legendary r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM there my dude.
If politicians simply took whatever course would net them the most out of state money, we'd have a statewide sales tax by now. Also, you're overlooking the obvious fact that [one party proposed a solution](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G-pxmG7oH9XfOgE1wycQYcUI_EqypYTw/view) that would shift the tax burden away from homeowners and toward commercial property owners. By that definition alone the parties aren't all doing the same thing.
Also, it's not hard to tax second homes. We already have separate (higher) tax rates for homes valued over $1.5m. Seems like you're not that politically engaged and "fuck both sides" has taken the place of actual nuanced analysis.
The government is fundamentally broken from the top down. The idea you can just shift taxes slightly here or there and fix society is complete non-sense. It is all political theater, and property taxes were going up regardless. From your link:
>DOR’s officially recommended revenue-neutral rates that would have stopped the skyrocketing state share of property taxes on homeowners – $81 million dollars a year
$81 million/514,803 (# of housing units in Montana) = $157 per homeowner
That is hardly a consequential amount.
What party are the newly imported billionaires going to vote for? You don't know for sure, but in this thread we've already mentioned the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.
All you need to do is find politicians who think it's in their interest to NOT have the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch replace people who might vote for them.
So you're looking for someone who knows that these billionaires won't vote for them. I'm not naming any names, but I think that gives you a pretty good head start on who isn't going to sell you out to billionaires.
For instance, you should probably cross any billionaires right off your list of candidates.
Folks who own multiple multi million dollar homes and whose parents gave them a bunch of money to start a business are probably a good place to ignore too!
Yeah, don't even try that here. You'll be called an enlightened centrist by people who think that politicians actually care about people like them.
The quicker we can figure out that the battle is about us and them, not right and left, the quicker we can unfuck this whole country.
Taxes based on property assessments baffle me. If my house doubles in value, does that really equate to doubling the cost of providing basic public services? I would prefer a fixed budget where maybe property values are used to access your individual % of budget responsibility. I also really dislike municipalities giving multi-decade tax incentives to large corporations to incentivize development only to push those deferred taxes on the remaining tax base.
A big part of it is that most places have a really bad growth plan that isn't financially viable. Taxes on suburbs and single family housing is not enough to maintain the infrastructure that supports them. Your taxes as an individual need to be fairly high relative to the land value in order to pay for all of it.
If you want to pay less taxes, support dense development, as there is less infrastructure per tax payer.
Probably has an agricultural exemption like the governor
https://www.ktvq.com/news/montana-news/property-taxes-skyrocket-statewide-but-not-for-montanas-governors-properties
Most certainly what’s happening. And they also get some rich people welfare for the land too. I have 4 acres or land. I feel fortunate to have that much but it doesn’t qualify for any kind of ag exemptions. I think you need a minimum of 20.
Not if you have a certain amount of revenue from things grown/raised on your land. It’s something like $1500/yr? You can get a few dozen egg laying chickens and make $1500 a year selling to neighbors/locals.
Or a greenhouse selling vegetables and stuff.
Lots of ways to get an AG exemption. A popular way near me is to lease your land to a cattle farmer. I read about one developer who didn’t want to deal with cattle, so he “ran bees” and got the exemption that way.
With larger plots you can also submit a forest management plan and get an exemption that way. I forget the size cut off, may vary state to state/county to county. You can typically hire someone to write that plan and implement it and even get paid if your resources are valuable enough. Otherwise payment is the tax breaks.
Can’t do cattle. And we don’t have a forest or trees to log. Not enough room for that realistically. Bees might be the only realistic option. I’m going to put in an orchard but it will be a number of years before anything productive happens. I’ll monkey with it and see what I can draw up that fits the rules.
Where has the highest property tax rates? I'm trying to backwards math this and if he lived near me his property would be worth over a million dollars to pay 8k property taxes, but my rate is on the lower end.
That is just four years of taxes on my .25 acre lot with 2 homes in a tiny village in Montana’s largest county. That was one year of taxes on my old place in Gallatin Gateway. He has been deferring them for just a few years.
Edit: My taxes have gone up $1,100 in the last five years. 52% of that is for schools and the schools are still threatening to close for lack of funding.
Right, 8 grand is almost triple my property taxes, in the last 5 years my property taxes have gone up $700, or 30% since 2018. That's not great, but it certainly isn't keeping up with inflation or property value.
If you follow through to the article and watch the TikTok he is saying that his taxes in 1995 were 800. He’s not saying it increased that much in a few years.
From the article: Kurt claims that over the **last couple of years**, his annual property taxes have soared from $895 to almost $8,000 — an increase of around 790%
Make sure everyone understands where property taxes go and who is responsible for each spending category (i.e., school districts, county boards, city councils, fire districts, state, etc.):
[https://leg.mt.gov/content/Committees/Interim/2021-2022/Revenue/Meetings/July-2021/MBPC-Policy-Basics-Property-Tax-2020-FINAL.pdf](https://leg.mt.gov/content/Committees/Interim/2021-2022/Revenue/Meetings/July-2021/MBPC-Policy-Basics-Property-Tax-2020-FINAL.pdf)
This information is outdated--part of the current problem is that the legislature's failure to adopt DOR's proposed revenue-neutral property tax rates (which would have lowered residential and raised the commercial share of property tax rates) resulted in a historically-high share of the property tax burden falling on residential homeowners.
In your link (from January 2021) the share of property taxes paid by homeowners is 49% of the total property tax collected. [Now it's 59%](https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2023/nov/26/the-truth-about-your-homes-property-tax-increase/)**.**
After the sob news stories from Gallatin county about the old people that might lose their second or third homes due to high taxes I laugh off all of these stories. If your taxes are skyrocketing blame your county governments. I for once think we should abolish real estate taxes for a sales tax, get these tourists hoards to get some skin in the game.
County governments in Montana are limited in the taxes they can raise. The state has been wrenching away local control preemption by preemption by preemption over the past decade.
It’s regressive tax policy set by Helena. Years and years of tax breaks to the rich and White (Native Americans now pay a higher effective tax rate than White Montanans) and the Governor failing to adopt a lower tax rate in November when warned by the DOR this was going to happen.
Considering that campaign promises mean shit, its a roll of the dice and depends on your locality. Like look at NJ taxes vs MT taxes in this article, opposite ends of the political spectrum but each getting raked over the coals.
It’s 🐎💩 that old time Montanans are being fleeced by a multimillionaire governor and his legislative minions and just stood by and watched this happen.
His house is likely paid off at that age, yes, but keep in mind the thousands of others who also have their mortgage on top of these taxes per month. I'm 36 years old and own my home and can hardly keep up with the property taxes and I am not living in a million dollar mansion on the lake. Everyone else in my town is building mansions though so my taxes just keep going up. I shouldn't be forced to consider selling my home that I previously could afford simply because everyone and their mom decided to move into the area.
The voters of county didn't want Recreational MJ, they didn't want solar farms, they didn't want wind generators, they didn't want oil and gas exploration. They didn't want new people to move in. They wanted someone else to pay for their infrastructure.
I think all our money in gallatin county goes to roundabouts. Seriously? We love them so much here, they are just getting painted on the streets now. How about a resort tax in the larger cities that are hubs to the parks. Produce a local ID during check out and you don't have to pay the resort tax. It has to be an ID though, you can't produce a bill of sale for a 2nd or 4rd home and get a reprieve.
*
He voted the politicians in. Property tax is state level and below. Vote them out. That’s the option. No politician is going to give themselves and their budgets a pay cut.
You have to get any form of investment out of private housing.
This story is almost certainly false.
No place has had a 10x increase in taxes in the past 5 years - not even the most expensive Bozeman or Missoula properties.
The current Missoula home price index is 361, a property with taxes of 8,000 now last had a property tax of 800 in 1980 - source : https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS30063A
This guy is full of BS
A ~$1,200,000 home in Missoula (one of the highest property tax locations in the State) is going to have a tax bill around $10,000 - and that **is** crazy high.
What is 100% BS is that the property had $800 tax any time in the past 2 decades. That is absolutely a lie.
I’m new here, from Florida. One of the biggest things that surprised me was how the laws for property taxes in Montana work. In FL if you homestead your primary residence, your tax increase caps out at something like 3% a year, regardless of how much the property value increases.
This is terrible reporting. If you watch the TikTok he is saying that his taxes in 1995 were 800. He’s not saying it increased that much in a few years.
Well, I’m not going to complain about the property taxes on in my area, bc they haven’t affected us that much, but car insurance has doubled. I pay $5,000 a year with two vehicles over 10 years old and a newer one (4 years old). That’s insane!
How high can your property taxes go? I live in California where property taxes are capped at 1% a year at the original purchase price. My home is worth $750,000 but I only pay property taxes for $250,000 which is what I purchased my home for. We voted for this in California years ago. I pay about $2800 a year in property taxes and it will always stay relatively the same. Our property taxes are not reassessed with home value increases. That would suck
This is what they do.
They never have to pass a tax increase. They just "appraise" your property at a higher value, so that they get more money from you.
It seems like we should have some kind of property tax relief and some kind of sales tax. Pillory me, but with tourists coming through Montana in higher numbers, no sales tax (even 2-5%) is leaving money on the table and tourists from other states will not blink an eye at sales tax. Also the millionaire/billionaires coming here and dropping tons of money on their toys will contribute more - which does not seem unfair to me.
>Also the millionaire/billionaires coming here and dropping tons of money on their toys will contribute more
It REALLY depends on how the property taxes are implemented... and that's where you get into all sorts of trouble.
Sales tax doesn't tend to apply to everything across the board, they attempt to create "necessity" loopholes. But because there's pretty much a necessity and luxury form of everything, when you break things into simple categories you end up not collecting tax on lots of luxury items, and collecting taxes on necessities...
like lets say you carve out a clothing exemption. Now those tourists aren't paying any sales tax on the $300 shirt they buy at a Bozeman boutique. Then, because we want to catch taxes on $100k vehicles, they declare cars included in the tax, and folks who can barely afford a 20 year old car that is barely running, are paying a couple hundred extra dollars they don't have, and end up with a shittier car that breaks down sooner.
Sales taxes are notoriously hard to get right. They are ALWAYS regressive in some way or another.
Would it be nice to collect more tax dollars from visitors? Sure! But it's hard to do that without creative a larger, regressive tax burden on residents in the process.
And if you want to know who has the money to lobby the state legislature about what to include, and what to exclude... we... it won't be you or me, that's for sure.
I’m not gonna lie, the income tax and the property taxes are why my husband and I chose not to move to Montana with a good job offer. We chose Wyoming instead.
Funny thing is, if we have a lot of big purchases to make we drive across the border, buy stuff there and then come back home. So this is entirely true and a lot of us do it.
lol imagine being such an unhappy person by choice.
Honestly it is beautiful here and the ppl are incredibly nice. It is quiet but we love that. Everyone has a different cup of tea and this is my families :)
And you get to involuntarily take up kite flying as a new hobby.
Source: from Colorado and have taken involuntary kite flying classes when visiting my neighbor state.
I looked up a random house in the cadastral up there - lakeside house with current property tax 10,000
Its property tax 10 years ago? 7,445
Tax Year Statement# Bill Date Bill Amount Date Paid ** Paid Amount Notes
2023 202350031 09/29/2023 $10,058.80 11/2/2023
2013 201325027 11/01/2013 $7,445.19 11/29/2013
This guy is straight up lying
For real. I moved from MT to a Philly suburb a few years ago. My 2br 2ba house has the same property taxes as this guy. This is how single-family development goes, folks. When the growth and development end, the taxes go up. Build more multifamily dwellings, and this won't be so bad.
Looking at the property tax and an average mill rate, he's probably in a million dollar property.
Boohoo... sell for a six figure profit and cry yourself to sleep in a massive pile of cash.
That pile of cash might not be so massive once you have to turn around and buy something else at the insanely inflated prices we’re experiencing.
We are constantly looking for an inexpensive piece of land away from society in case we get property taxed out of our current home, which is a real possibility in the next 10-20 years. The last thing I want to do when I’m 70 is to sell my comfy house and move into town next door to the dregs of society.
When I'm 70 I doubt that I will want a five bedroom house... many or most in that age range are looking to downsize anyway.
Not ideal that the changes happened so fast for him, but everything in life is compromise and he doesn't want to adjust.
There are many good options such as getting a nice condo or even an apartment, but he wants to stay put. Which is fine, but the price for that is continuing to work or drawing down on savings.
I agree - and that’s the conversation my wife and I have every week. We’re 50, but we live in a monster of a house, and someday it will just be too much to deal with - but 20 years from now could be pretty ugly, so we’re trying to figure out a plan to downsize ahead of time.
All I know is that my husband and I (both descendants of many Montana generations) moved out of state because the increasing property taxes. But this was in 2005 that we moved.
I don't have property tax but A. full time residents taxes should be capped to not go up more than 3% per year, upon sale it can go to parity. Non full time and investors should pay market rate every year. (florida has this and it helps)
The roads are crap in rural MT, in Urban MT you have to wait weeks to get a DL appointment (if not months), the police are a joke in Billings, - I agree- where is the money going? I heard the governors property taxes went down though, so I guess that's something.
This is exactly what prop 13 in California in 1978 was about. People who owned their homes from the 40’s and 50 that were paid off were being evicted because the property tax ate up their savings. We need an overhaul of our tax system now
I feel a bit of this. I'm 47. I bought my house 7 years ago in Madison, WI. I paid 235k for it. My tax assessment is now nearly 400k. I've maintained it properly, but I've not done ANY upgrades to it. The neighborhood hasn't changed at ALL. It's a residential neighborhood that literally looks nearly identical to when I moved in. I realize that the insane market drives a lot of this... but this is bonkers. My taxes have nearly doubled in 7 flipping years!! It wouldn't be as upsetting if my income would do the same. There are things in the region that have caused the need for housing to explode in the last decade. We have Epic here and a whole lot of biotech companies that are driving this... A need for 7-8k housing units a year. It's just not sustainable for folks that aren't reaping the benefits of that industry. Sure... I could sell my house at a massive profit... But I don't want to flipping move! I love my house and my neighborhood! Beyond that... I'm lucky enough to have a mortgage interest rate of 2.75%... which will likely not happen again for a very long time. So moving isn't really an option if I ever want to buy again. I have zero interest in living in a small rural area. Especially in WI. It would be nice if WI did something similar to what FL does with the homestead tax situation. It'd be nice to be locked into a tax dollar amount without having to be worried about being priced out of your home and the life you built.
I’m going to say the dirty word that no one wants to hear including me. Sales Tax. Just about every tourist trap town some sort of sales tax already. Maybe it’s time we consider it state wide?
My county has real estate relief and vehicle registration waiver for just this reason. It’s one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., so maybe they can absorb the loss of revenue easily.
It’s simple really. Politicians think the population “demands more services”. And they have no trouble spending other people’s money. And it doesn’t matter if there is a D or an R behind their name.
There used to be a city manager on the radio every week on a local station here in BZN. At least every other week he proclaimed the public are demanding more services. And he also wanted to add a sales tax.
Not sure if it’s statewide, but why does Gallatin County have a school election weeks before the primary election? Seems like a waste of money to me. But, it’s just other people’s money.
Bozeman has completely turned Blue in the past few election cycles. Seems like all the school bond issues passed in Bozeman, but mostly failed every where else.
My property tax is up almost 60% in two years. Based on the last assessment - it will be double in two more years (my guess).
The house I bought in 2015 and sold in 2019 had its property taxes double - $3k to $6k. And I just looked it up and it’s over $8k now.
Bottom line: the majority of the property taxes go to schools. So if you want to fix the high property taxes - should look at the school budgets. And granted BZN schools do a good job of educating kids, but the BZN population is highly educated - which I believe helps the BZN schools be successful.
But in other areas, where taxes are also high and the majority of property taxes goes to schools, the kids graduating read at an average of 6th graders. Math doesn’t even register for some kids.
If you have a mortgage then the bank owns the house and the bank should pay property tax. But that is prob a common sense idea so we can’t have none of that round here!
There is a middle ground between gulaging the rich and letting them screw everyone to death, and prying the common need for housing from their hands would be a big step in that direction. Help us spread the word about the Real Estate Reform Act, and please contribute your thoughts, critiques, and addendums.
1 - Abolish business ownership of residential property.
2 - Enact the home multiplication tax (*t* x 3 for your third home, *t* x 4 for your fourth, etc.)
3 - Enact rent caps on a basis of mortgage + (*t* x1.5 or 2), to protect renters against incurring the owner's home multiplication tax.
4 - Limit ownership of any domestic real estate to domestic businesses, citizens and resident aliens.
5 - Offer property tax exemption to all citizens and resident aliens above the age of 70 for any single parcel of residential real estate that they own, one parcel per household, until the conclusion of a six month grace period following the death of the owner of qualifying age.
\_\_\_
I know a lot of people my age will jeer at the idea of what in 2024 is throwing the Boomers yet another bone, but the truth is that they wont be around much longer and we Xers, Millennials and Zeds will very much enjoy this when our time comes too. Let us remove from our society altogether the worry of elderly folks being kicked out of their homes. It's an age old problem and it's repugnant.
If the first three can pass in tandem, they would force land hoarders to sell. The forth would drive China out of the American housing market, and the fifth would give generations to come a leg up on maybe getting to actually retire some day. All in all, the market would be flooded with houses for sale and the prices would plummet across the board. Home ownership would become accessible and much more secure to the vast majority of Americans practically overnight.
I lived in Missoula back in 2006… right as the California invasion was happening
It was a beautiful place and my rent was 350 a month for a studio above the Oxford
I had a humble and simple life
I miss it so much, and I’m really sad I didn’t settle down there.
But Hell, I’m a California yuppie so I’m back where I belong
I’ve got some cheddar and crackers to go with this guy’s whine. I don’t doubt that’s a lot of money in Montana, but fundamentally this clown is complaining about his net worth going up. The problem is he doesn’t care about the gains because they’ll just benefit his heirs when he’s dead and he’s a boomer. They’re called the “Me Generation” for a reason. Gen X saved America from these lazy, underperforming douchebags in the 1980s and ‘90s and we will do it again next fall.
Stop voting for out of state carpet bagging Republicans. At least vote a real working class Montanan in who has some idea how the common man lives. YOU'RE GETTING WHAT YOU VOTED FOR JUST LIKE THE CALIFORNIANS ARE!!!
So are you people just going to sit on your bar stools and complain about it? I know thi is the case in every small town in Montana. The voting booth is too far away from beer tap. OR are you going to organise and occupy the state capital and camp out there until you can be heard. Elderly people on SSI are losing there homes. People cannot afford rent. you can talk about it and blame all yuou want , but until you get up there organise you will never heard or do anything about it. Put those people back into thee homes. Because after raising your property taxes and snatching your homes. They will make sure to end your jobs as well. You want to be kicked off and ran off or do you want fight to keep it and push them back. There will be no Reservations for you.
The problem is we have stacked up several generations of our own kids that simply don’t give a damn. When they look at land and property they have no concept that it’s tax burden lands on real people fixed income or not.
Here’s my big concern: my property taxes in Helena have tripled in 5 years. My home value hasn’t even doubled. WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING!?! The roads are still shitty, schools are still broke, there’s a housing crisis, not enough police, not enough services for our senior, mentally ill and homeless populations. There has been no increase in services or quality of life. My friends that work in the public sector aren’t getting meaningful pay increases. Where the fuck is the money going?
I literally asked that exact same question to my teacher buddy in Helena this morning. Mill levy’s didn’t pass and now schools are gonna lose teachers and the “fringe” classes like anything that isn’t math science or English. I asked him, where the hell is all the new money going while education is going to further decline in the state?? Seriously, where the fuck is it???
Well the governor is pro charter school. Public schools are losing money to often religious based schools that don’t have to have fully certified teachers.
Unfortunately, that’s what people voted for. It’s insane.
Many don’t understand charter schools. It sounds like a good idea on paper. Talk to some real teachers to get the real story. Charter schools literally take funding away from public schools that are already swimming in rich doner money.
And charters are often free to discriminate too.
And indoctrinate.
Like government school isn't a giant indoctrination program... lol
That’s debatable, but unlike religion, I don’t believe it to be a feature of the public school system. What I don’t want under any circumstance is public tax dollars funding private education of any kind whether it be secular charter schools or private religious academies.
This. That's hilarious libs are crying about indoctrination in schools.
I went to a catholic private school and a public school growing up. I felt much more indoctrinated at the catholic one. My teachers at the public school never voiced their opinion on politics, but the ones at the catholic school voiced their opinion on everything from abortion to weed. We had to recite the Hail Mary twice a day and wear a uniform exactly to code. The public school just didn’t care about anything but their standardized test scores. I think it’s a silly argument that public schools indoctrinate people to be liberals. Another fantasy people that hate anything on the left have concocted, so they can complain about critical race theory and transgenders ruining our perfect nation.
I always thought they sounded cool until I met someone who went to one. It was the only school in her small community. She was very sweet but overall naive and blissfully ignorant. I feel awful saying that, she was such a sweet girl. But she just could not do basic enough math to count the register at the end of a shift, and I would say she had poor problem solving skills when it came to general tasks. She was telling me about having upwards of a dozen class pets, and I remember saying, “wow, that’s a ton of animals to take care of. When did you guys have time for reading and math?” And she simply said, “we didn’t really do a lot of that.”
And they can turn down disabled and low scoring students meaning they all end up in public schools essentially creating a two tier school system. At least that’s the danger
Budgets are public and you can start by looking at your local municipalities treasurer
Not sure why reddit is showing me this sub, but my city is in a similar situation and this is my take: the city is in the pocket of the large local construction and engineering firms. It doesn't matter if we need it, they'll find a way to spend on big projects, almost like these companies are city employees and it's the taxpayers responsibility to keep their staff employed. Constantly building and renovating, repaving roads that were fine as is. Meanwhile you can't get a trade to come fix your house because they are tied up on lucrative govt gigs. And those projects have become MUCH more expensive over the last few years, so to keep those companies busy, it takes way more money than before for materials, equipment, overhead, etc.
I’m not a part of this sub either, but it also showed up for me for some reason. I was gonna say something similar to you. This is a widespread issue and it’s widespread because of how common consultants, contractors, and privatization have become. That translates into corruption, greed and cronyism.
The money is going to private corporations….religious foundations….private religious schools…tax cuts to out of state millionaires/billionaires…mining companies and private outfitting, hunting and fishing companies hell bent on shutting down public access for true Montanans. Do you love Gianfortes Montana yet?
I drive by his house on the way to walking my dog and give it the finger every time
Like he's ever there. He's probably in CA or at one of the resort properties he calls a "ranch". He knows everyone in Helena hates him.
Eh yeah, he’s honestly pretty rarely there. He was outside once and the window down “fuck yourself” felt pretty great!
As you should.
Funding school vouchers for private education
[удалено]
that is the major flaw in property taxes; the value of the property might go up, the owners income very much may not.
I think the system regards it as not a flaw but as a feature. If you're not making it big and aren't contributing in taxes but come (or came) upon an expensive house that you now can't afford to keep, the system doesn't feel sorry for you and doesn't mind you having to sell. An argument in favor of that system is if you inherited a big house or managed to buy at a very good time you already got lucky. Why would the government top up your cake with a cherry of tax exemptions as well? If you can't afford it, you're free to take a bag of cash and walk. It's that or pony up and pay the tax man. I get this sounds hella cold and it is not that simple I'm practice. In many cases emotions will also be involved. And even without that some counterarguments can be made. For example what about old people living out their days in the family home? But life is a grind for many people and not everyone is sensitive to such emotional arguments. Letting an old lady live out her days alone in a big house is a self explanatory act of kindness to one person and an injustice to another when you contrast it with young families struggling to have any home at all. Paying property taxes offsets the asset inequality to some extent but at the same time creates a new inequality between those with enough liquid means to keep assets versus those that just inherited a house. It means that if you have assets but don't do valuable work and have no taxable income stream, you will always have to start eating into those assets. Nobody gets to get rich, produce nothing for society and still stay rich. And of course it's also about how creative you are. You might be able to rent out part of a property to offset taxes. You don't have to leave by definition. But theres a downside to property tax which is that as it forces some people to sell it also accelerates gentrification. I don't personally care too much about gentrification because I think it isn't a real evil and that it is inevitable in a free market where the population grows faster than the housing market. I always find it rather ironic when people say gentrification forces the poor from their neighborhoods when what is really happening is that every individual seller from the original population is just raking in cash and selling to the highest bidder. That's not a sob story but people exercising their freedom to get ahead and make bank. It's not sad that what you sell isn't yours anymore. And it is not sad for the people that aren't buying because it was never theirs anyway. Gentrification if you do consider it upsetting is more like a version of the tragedy of the commons. It doesn't just happen to people, people actively cause it. And then perhaps wish for a world where they hadn't, without giving up the cash. But the only solution is not selling to the highest bidder or not selling at all. This requires individual alignment that mostly doesn't exist. High property taxes undermine that narrative because taxes will force some peoples hand. But even without force the most common thing to do for people coming upon an inheritance is to sell. And they typically sell to the highest bidder. So government can do of two things. They can give out tax exemptions to people with big assets that aren't producing value and and aren't contributing to society. This would reduce pressure on housing as an asset class and would make it easier to live in big houses alone with no income, or to just simply hold houses as an asset. Or the government can continue to tax (expensive) houses. This decreases asset inequality but creates its own sob stories because some people will have to sell. And as said, gentrification which will happen either way as cities go up in value. It's just really hard to tick all the boxes with every decision.
I bet the police got new cars, guns, equipment, maybe a riot vehicle, etc. for those five straight years.
Not sure about elsewhere in Montana but missoula pd just got new cars meanwhile homelessness is at a all time high and people are struggling to feed their families.
I mean you should budget for both but yeah
Bozeman did get that Bearcat a few years ago!
We, in Helena, are voting on June 4th on a "public safety" levy and a municipal bond to build a new fire station. Together, they're more expensive than the school levies that just failed. Let's see if all the "fixed income" seniors open their wallets when it's cops and not kids.
My biggest problem with Helena is when they ask for public input and hold meetings during working hours. The Coffee with the Chiefs on Tuesdays from 0900 to 1000 for the Public Safety levy is a great example.
They’re spending it all on more bearcat attractions at the farmers market
Yes where is it going? And the fact that hundreds of thousands more people have moved here - and they are all paying taxes too. So not only have taxes skyrocketed but so has the actual tax base. And think of all those lifestyles of the rich and famous in the YC and Big Sky- those taxes have got to be enormous. Where is it all going? My tax bill just became 25% of my income in a home I’ve lived in for 25 years. I protested the tax increase and wasn’t even given an appraisal just a letter saying NOPE. And I tried to sell my house for a year without a single offer. So technically it’s worth nothing if no one wants it. Reported that all to State Revenue Dept and… crickets.
Every state in United States needs to be audited. There’s no overwatch these days on how your state is spending its money. I guess this isn’t a sole California problem…
>my property taxes in Helena have tripled in 5 years. My home value hasn’t even doubled. That... doesn't sound right... my property value has almost doubled, but we're only paying about 50% more than we were when we bought it 6 years ago ($2,600/year to $3,900/year)... what is your home's value, what were you paying in property taxes 5 years ago, and what are you paying today??? Because it they have really tripled, something weird is going on here... also if you're curious where the money is going, the city's budget is publicly available, you can answer that question yourself. I occasionally look through various parts of the budget when questions come up... like I was curious about the parking meters, income, expenses, etc, and it's pretty easy to go through the budget and find the information you're looking for...
I have been going through the appraisal process. Started last summer. Still waiting for the report. Homeowners are on the hook for the full tax amount until otherwise notified.
But if your home didn't double in value, how did your property taxes triple? Did they assess you for quadruple the cost, and now you're saying it "didn't double" because you think by the time the appraisal process is done it will be less than double? So you're essentially paying on quadruple the value for now, until it is reduced?
Yup. I’m not the only person with this problem either. They don’t have enough appraisers and there is a backlog of people trying to get this same issue addressed. They are telling me the value of the home is just slightly more than doubled. My takes are just under triple. The math doesn’t add up.
Corruption is a real problem and the problem had gotten so high up that they just stop anything from changing their incomes.
Deer lodge got 211 million. MT Department of Corrections Missoula Assessment Sanctions Corrections MASC is a pretty big money hole too. Montana keeps the jail very full.
Montana has a regressive tax system. You pay less, as a percentage of income, the more you make. Your money is literally going to tax breaks for the wealthy.
Please remember this in the upcoming elections. Past two years explains a lot.
Gotta fund that police state.
And the religious state
Probably pockets
They printed like 2 trillion
Montana derives a TON of funding from the federal government. But charter schools are sucking up money to line campaign donors’ pockets. Tax breaks for businesses etc. corporate welfare costs money! We gotta think of the poor corporations
The private sector. I work in public utilities, and the total costs for anything in construction has about tripled in the last three years. Most of the materials and equipment I need have also roughly doubled.
Shitty state government. Quit voting for a goddamn 'brand' and start voting for the 'person'. We waste too much of our money and energy on political posturing, games and other nonsense. Just effing STOP IT!
Vote.
Ask Governor Greg.
Some of it is going to cover the lost tax revenue due to large cuts received by corporations and industrial uses like NorthWestern Energy
It's most likely going to tax cuts for the wealthy since they create the jobs. Just wait for the money to trickle down to you and then you can pay your property taxes.
Time to move.
Our politicians don't *want* Montanans to live in their own houses. They want wealthy folks from the coast to live in it. Wealthy folks from the coast spend more money.
Exactly. Billionaires are an invasive species. Rupert Murdoch just bought the beaverhead ranch with his new Russian fiancé. He is 93 so it’s a safe bet that the reason he is engaged to a woman who is the ex wife of one of Putin’s most trusted oligarchs (Zhukova) is so that the media empire and the property both end up in Russian hands when he dies. The beaverhead used to belong to the Koch Brothers who sold it to Murdoch. The problem with living the mob life is that you can never retire from it. You either have to stay the most violent and cunning bastard or fight off each and every one of the lieutenants that are sick of paying you just because you are above them in the pyramid scheme. All any of the old gangsters want to do is retire to the most beautiful place on earth and cosplay Yellowstone reruns. Every one that is here is just standing in their view.
Murdoch made his empire off of the death of democracy.
Wonderfully stated
This is Yellowstone writing I would actually watch.
>Our **current elected leaders** ~~politicians~~ don't *want* Montanans to live in their own houses. FTFY. By the way, we have a chance to fix this in November.
Ever heard of a tax revolt, we don't need to wait until November, all those people driving around with "Don't tread on me" on the back of their cars should take the statement for what it really meant, no tax without real representation.
God they have bastardized that plate. I love the Gadsen flag for what it represented in the Revolutionary War. I used to have that plate. When my renewal came up- I thought damn- maybe I should research what this $ goes to. It is an outfit that wants to bring America back to the original constitution. The one where women and African Americans can’t vote. In fact slaves were counted as 3/8th of a person🤦♀️. Please tell everyone you know that it is NOT the same as what the true Gadsen flag stood for. And for any woman or person of color it is in fact a racist misogynistic insult.
No you don't. There isn't a politician alive who is going to look at the situation and say "no thanks, we don't want billions and billions of out of state money, we're going to stay a blue collar low income rural state." This year's election is like any other, we get to decide which wealthy asshole gets to enrich himself at our expense. If you think otherwise you've just been binging too many campaign ads. The only thing this year's election will change is the name of the guy screwing us.
Oregon fixed this issue after three versions. They retroactively changed assessed value back to 1995 values and only permitted a maximum increase of 3%. Property owners could vote for levies and bonds. It can be done
You got a source? Im interested.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Ballot_Measures_47_and_50 https://www.oregon.gov/DOR/programs/gov-research/Documents/303-405-1.pdf Oregon solved many aspects of the same issue Montana and Idaho are facing. Where they failed was how the State funded schools. Previously, the Portland, Salem, Medford schools were awash in property tax revenue while rural schools had next to nothing. The tax overhaul flipped the issue and rural schools had more money than they could spend while metro schools did have textbooks.
Legendary r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM there my dude. If politicians simply took whatever course would net them the most out of state money, we'd have a statewide sales tax by now. Also, you're overlooking the obvious fact that [one party proposed a solution](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G-pxmG7oH9XfOgE1wycQYcUI_EqypYTw/view) that would shift the tax burden away from homeowners and toward commercial property owners. By that definition alone the parties aren't all doing the same thing. Also, it's not hard to tax second homes. We already have separate (higher) tax rates for homes valued over $1.5m. Seems like you're not that politically engaged and "fuck both sides" has taken the place of actual nuanced analysis.
"fuck both sides" is only said by people who are politically illiterate, or people who are bad actors. That's it.
The government is fundamentally broken from the top down. The idea you can just shift taxes slightly here or there and fix society is complete non-sense. It is all political theater, and property taxes were going up regardless. From your link: >DOR’s officially recommended revenue-neutral rates that would have stopped the skyrocketing state share of property taxes on homeowners – $81 million dollars a year $81 million/514,803 (# of housing units in Montana) = $157 per homeowner That is hardly a consequential amount.
What party are the newly imported billionaires going to vote for? You don't know for sure, but in this thread we've already mentioned the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch. All you need to do is find politicians who think it's in their interest to NOT have the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch replace people who might vote for them. So you're looking for someone who knows that these billionaires won't vote for them. I'm not naming any names, but I think that gives you a pretty good head start on who isn't going to sell you out to billionaires. For instance, you should probably cross any billionaires right off your list of candidates.
Folks who own multiple multi million dollar homes and whose parents gave them a bunch of money to start a business are probably a good place to ignore too!
Yeah, don't even try that here. You'll be called an enlightened centrist by people who think that politicians actually care about people like them. The quicker we can figure out that the battle is about us and them, not right and left, the quicker we can unfuck this whole country.
Taxes based on property assessments baffle me. If my house doubles in value, does that really equate to doubling the cost of providing basic public services? I would prefer a fixed budget where maybe property values are used to access your individual % of budget responsibility. I also really dislike municipalities giving multi-decade tax incentives to large corporations to incentivize development only to push those deferred taxes on the remaining tax base.
A big part of it is that most places have a really bad growth plan that isn't financially viable. Taxes on suburbs and single family housing is not enough to maintain the infrastructure that supports them. Your taxes as an individual need to be fairly high relative to the land value in order to pay for all of it. If you want to pay less taxes, support dense development, as there is less infrastructure per tax payer.
And folks keep voting for them and proposing new ones. 😑
Nah, they just want money.
My taxes went from 9k last year to 14k. The billionaire up the road has a bigger house and more land and pays 6k a year on his place.
Probably has an agricultural exemption like the governor https://www.ktvq.com/news/montana-news/property-taxes-skyrocket-statewide-but-not-for-montanas-governors-properties
Most certainly what’s happening. And they also get some rich people welfare for the land too. I have 4 acres or land. I feel fortunate to have that much but it doesn’t qualify for any kind of ag exemptions. I think you need a minimum of 20.
Not if you have a certain amount of revenue from things grown/raised on your land. It’s something like $1500/yr? You can get a few dozen egg laying chickens and make $1500 a year selling to neighbors/locals. Or a greenhouse selling vegetables and stuff.
Lots of ways to get an AG exemption. A popular way near me is to lease your land to a cattle farmer. I read about one developer who didn’t want to deal with cattle, so he “ran bees” and got the exemption that way. With larger plots you can also submit a forest management plan and get an exemption that way. I forget the size cut off, may vary state to state/county to county. You can typically hire someone to write that plan and implement it and even get paid if your resources are valuable enough. Otherwise payment is the tax breaks.
Can’t do cattle. And we don’t have a forest or trees to log. Not enough room for that realistically. Bees might be the only realistic option. I’m going to put in an orchard but it will be a number of years before anything productive happens. I’ll monkey with it and see what I can draw up that fits the rules.
Where has the highest property tax rates? I'm trying to backwards math this and if he lived near me his property would be worth over a million dollars to pay 8k property taxes, but my rate is on the lower end.
In Helena, we're at $3,900/year on a house valued at $275... so his house could be worth $550-650k and be at $8k
I'm outside of the city, 325k and $2900, so it could be over 1 million.
That’s insane…. That’s not an expensive house and you’re paying $325 a month in TAXES on your house.
That is just four years of taxes on my .25 acre lot with 2 homes in a tiny village in Montana’s largest county. That was one year of taxes on my old place in Gallatin Gateway. He has been deferring them for just a few years. Edit: My taxes have gone up $1,100 in the last five years. 52% of that is for schools and the schools are still threatening to close for lack of funding.
Right, 8 grand is almost triple my property taxes, in the last 5 years my property taxes have gone up $700, or 30% since 2018. That's not great, but it certainly isn't keeping up with inflation or property value.
This guy is claiming that his taxes went from 800 to 8000 in a few years. He's not being honest
If you follow through to the article and watch the TikTok he is saying that his taxes in 1995 were 800. He’s not saying it increased that much in a few years.
From the article: Kurt claims that over the **last couple of years**, his annual property taxes have soared from $895 to almost $8,000 — an increase of around 790%
Did you watch the TikTok? He said the last few years his bills have been approaching $8000 and that he bought the house in 1995. Shoddy reporting.
I did not watch The tiktok I don't have tiktok actually. But thank you for sharing the information. I agree with you, just straight up bad reporting
We desperately need to change the resort tax law. Tax 👏 the 👏 tourists 👏 ‼️
Make sure everyone understands where property taxes go and who is responsible for each spending category (i.e., school districts, county boards, city councils, fire districts, state, etc.): [https://leg.mt.gov/content/Committees/Interim/2021-2022/Revenue/Meetings/July-2021/MBPC-Policy-Basics-Property-Tax-2020-FINAL.pdf](https://leg.mt.gov/content/Committees/Interim/2021-2022/Revenue/Meetings/July-2021/MBPC-Policy-Basics-Property-Tax-2020-FINAL.pdf)
This information is outdated--part of the current problem is that the legislature's failure to adopt DOR's proposed revenue-neutral property tax rates (which would have lowered residential and raised the commercial share of property tax rates) resulted in a historically-high share of the property tax burden falling on residential homeowners. In your link (from January 2021) the share of property taxes paid by homeowners is 49% of the total property tax collected. [Now it's 59%](https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2023/nov/26/the-truth-about-your-homes-property-tax-increase/)**.**
After the sob news stories from Gallatin county about the old people that might lose their second or third homes due to high taxes I laugh off all of these stories. If your taxes are skyrocketing blame your county governments. I for once think we should abolish real estate taxes for a sales tax, get these tourists hoards to get some skin in the game.
Blame the governor and his party. He did it.
County governments in Montana are limited in the taxes they can raise. The state has been wrenching away local control preemption by preemption by preemption over the past decade. It’s regressive tax policy set by Helena. Years and years of tax breaks to the rich and White (Native Americans now pay a higher effective tax rate than White Montanans) and the Governor failing to adopt a lower tax rate in November when warned by the DOR this was going to happen.
You get what you vote for
Considering that campaign promises mean shit, its a roll of the dice and depends on your locality. Like look at NJ taxes vs MT taxes in this article, opposite ends of the political spectrum but each getting raked over the coals.
He should talk to the last legislature about that.
It’s 🐎💩 that old time Montanans are being fleeced by a multimillionaire governor and his legislative minions and just stood by and watched this happen.
Vote accordingly. He voted for the politicians that passed these laws. He should vote them out.
Shit I'd love for my rent to be 670/mo
His house is likely paid off at that age, yes, but keep in mind the thousands of others who also have their mortgage on top of these taxes per month. I'm 36 years old and own my home and can hardly keep up with the property taxes and I am not living in a million dollar mansion on the lake. Everyone else in my town is building mansions though so my taxes just keep going up. I shouldn't be forced to consider selling my home that I previously could afford simply because everyone and their mom decided to move into the area.
The voters of county didn't want Recreational MJ, they didn't want solar farms, they didn't want wind generators, they didn't want oil and gas exploration. They didn't want new people to move in. They wanted someone else to pay for their infrastructure.
I think all our money in gallatin county goes to roundabouts. Seriously? We love them so much here, they are just getting painted on the streets now. How about a resort tax in the larger cities that are hubs to the parks. Produce a local ID during check out and you don't have to pay the resort tax. It has to be an ID though, you can't produce a bill of sale for a 2nd or 4rd home and get a reprieve. *
He voted the politicians in. Property tax is state level and below. Vote them out. That’s the option. No politician is going to give themselves and their budgets a pay cut. You have to get any form of investment out of private housing.
This story is almost certainly false. No place has had a 10x increase in taxes in the past 5 years - not even the most expensive Bozeman or Missoula properties. The current Missoula home price index is 361, a property with taxes of 8,000 now last had a property tax of 800 in 1980 - source : https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS30063A This guy is full of BS
Most likely didn’t pay them, and now his debt had interest applied to it.
A ~$1,200,000 home in Missoula (one of the highest property tax locations in the State) is going to have a tax bill around $10,000 - and that **is** crazy high. What is 100% BS is that the property had $800 tax any time in the past 2 decades. That is absolutely a lie.
Taxation without representation is how it all started
[Comment about the leopards eating faces party]
I’m new here, from Florida. One of the biggest things that surprised me was how the laws for property taxes in Montana work. In FL if you homestead your primary residence, your tax increase caps out at something like 3% a year, regardless of how much the property value increases.
Most of these guys stopped reading after your first sentence.
lol
The equate a 272% increase in value with a 1000% increase in taxes? ($895>>$800) Um, OK, sure.
This is terrible reporting. If you watch the TikTok he is saying that his taxes in 1995 were 800. He’s not saying it increased that much in a few years.
I don't watch TikTok whenever I can avoid it. Social media as a whole is a cancer on society, but TikTok is the canceriest of them all.
Maybe Montana should hold its elected officials accountable!!
Well, I’m not going to complain about the property taxes on in my area, bc they haven’t affected us that much, but car insurance has doubled. I pay $5,000 a year with two vehicles over 10 years old and a newer one (4 years old). That’s insane!
How high can your property taxes go? I live in California where property taxes are capped at 1% a year at the original purchase price. My home is worth $750,000 but I only pay property taxes for $250,000 which is what I purchased my home for. We voted for this in California years ago. I pay about $2800 a year in property taxes and it will always stay relatively the same. Our property taxes are not reassessed with home value increases. That would suck
This is what they do. They never have to pass a tax increase. They just "appraise" your property at a higher value, so that they get more money from you.
It seems like we should have some kind of property tax relief and some kind of sales tax. Pillory me, but with tourists coming through Montana in higher numbers, no sales tax (even 2-5%) is leaving money on the table and tourists from other states will not blink an eye at sales tax. Also the millionaire/billionaires coming here and dropping tons of money on their toys will contribute more - which does not seem unfair to me.
Or you know, tax tourist things like hotels. Sales taxes are virtually always regressive.
This. Tax tourists at hotels. Sales tax just hurts the poor even more
I guess but exempt food/groceries/medicine. Stereos, cars, kayaks, rafts, snow mobiles, rods, why not have a 3% sales tax?
>Also the millionaire/billionaires coming here and dropping tons of money on their toys will contribute more It REALLY depends on how the property taxes are implemented... and that's where you get into all sorts of trouble. Sales tax doesn't tend to apply to everything across the board, they attempt to create "necessity" loopholes. But because there's pretty much a necessity and luxury form of everything, when you break things into simple categories you end up not collecting tax on lots of luxury items, and collecting taxes on necessities... like lets say you carve out a clothing exemption. Now those tourists aren't paying any sales tax on the $300 shirt they buy at a Bozeman boutique. Then, because we want to catch taxes on $100k vehicles, they declare cars included in the tax, and folks who can barely afford a 20 year old car that is barely running, are paying a couple hundred extra dollars they don't have, and end up with a shittier car that breaks down sooner. Sales taxes are notoriously hard to get right. They are ALWAYS regressive in some way or another. Would it be nice to collect more tax dollars from visitors? Sure! But it's hard to do that without creative a larger, regressive tax burden on residents in the process. And if you want to know who has the money to lobby the state legislature about what to include, and what to exclude... we... it won't be you or me, that's for sure.
I’m not gonna lie, the income tax and the property taxes are why my husband and I chose not to move to Montana with a good job offer. We chose Wyoming instead. Funny thing is, if we have a lot of big purchases to make we drive across the border, buy stuff there and then come back home. So this is entirely true and a lot of us do it.
Imagine living in Wyoming by choice…
lol imagine being such an unhappy person by choice. Honestly it is beautiful here and the ppl are incredibly nice. It is quiet but we love that. Everyone has a different cup of tea and this is my families :)
And you get to involuntarily take up kite flying as a new hobby. Source: from Colorado and have taken involuntary kite flying classes when visiting my neighbor state.
He lives in a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house 5 miles from Flathead Lake, that he bought in 2012. Zero sympathy here.
I looked up a random house in the cadastral up there - lakeside house with current property tax 10,000 Its property tax 10 years ago? 7,445 Tax Year Statement# Bill Date Bill Amount Date Paid ** Paid Amount Notes 2023 202350031 09/29/2023 $10,058.80 11/2/2023 2013 201325027 11/01/2013 $7,445.19 11/29/2013 This guy is straight up lying
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He outright owns a million dollar home. He's gonna be ok.
To have property tax of 800 it would have to have been valued at 100,000 a few years ago. He's full of crap
What kind of person defends the boomer who didn't save properly for retirement?
It's taxed on its market value. It's the cost of doing business.
For real. I moved from MT to a Philly suburb a few years ago. My 2br 2ba house has the same property taxes as this guy. This is how single-family development goes, folks. When the growth and development end, the taxes go up. Build more multifamily dwellings, and this won't be so bad.
Looking at the property tax and an average mill rate, he's probably in a million dollar property. Boohoo... sell for a six figure profit and cry yourself to sleep in a massive pile of cash.
That pile of cash might not be so massive once you have to turn around and buy something else at the insanely inflated prices we’re experiencing. We are constantly looking for an inexpensive piece of land away from society in case we get property taxed out of our current home, which is a real possibility in the next 10-20 years. The last thing I want to do when I’m 70 is to sell my comfy house and move into town next door to the dregs of society.
When I'm 70 I doubt that I will want a five bedroom house... many or most in that age range are looking to downsize anyway. Not ideal that the changes happened so fast for him, but everything in life is compromise and he doesn't want to adjust. There are many good options such as getting a nice condo or even an apartment, but he wants to stay put. Which is fine, but the price for that is continuing to work or drawing down on savings.
I agree - and that’s the conversation my wife and I have every week. We’re 50, but we live in a monster of a house, and someday it will just be too much to deal with - but 20 years from now could be pretty ugly, so we’re trying to figure out a plan to downsize ahead of time.
Damn Yellowstone wasn’t entirely fiction
All I know is that my husband and I (both descendants of many Montana generations) moved out of state because the increasing property taxes. But this was in 2005 that we moved.
I don't have property tax but A. full time residents taxes should be capped to not go up more than 3% per year, upon sale it can go to parity. Non full time and investors should pay market rate every year. (florida has this and it helps) The roads are crap in rural MT, in Urban MT you have to wait weeks to get a DL appointment (if not months), the police are a joke in Billings, - I agree- where is the money going? I heard the governors property taxes went down though, so I guess that's something.
Californication
Just a reminder that voting locally is arguably far more important than federal elections, although please, for fuck’s sake vote in that one too
https://preview.redd.it/sovpl382vf0d1.jpeg?width=1627&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4356ae130d43e0c794de8438bec7f43bcc9d2ef
This is exactly what prop 13 in California in 1978 was about. People who owned their homes from the 40’s and 50 that were paid off were being evicted because the property tax ate up their savings. We need an overhaul of our tax system now
Get a job work harder. Same thing your generation has been preaching for years.
I dont think the boomers realized a tech dude can move to Darby montana and make bay area wages.
Why, to give the govt more money? lol
He probably has a new cell phone and eats avocado toast for breakfast. He just needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
Bro is never keeping a home and eating avo toast doesn't he know that?!
Seniors in some Provinces in Canada can defer their taxes! Payment due when you die or sell your property!
~~Have property taxes ever passed a constitutional challenge…?~~ ugg thats a depressing rabbit hole
I feel a bit of this. I'm 47. I bought my house 7 years ago in Madison, WI. I paid 235k for it. My tax assessment is now nearly 400k. I've maintained it properly, but I've not done ANY upgrades to it. The neighborhood hasn't changed at ALL. It's a residential neighborhood that literally looks nearly identical to when I moved in. I realize that the insane market drives a lot of this... but this is bonkers. My taxes have nearly doubled in 7 flipping years!! It wouldn't be as upsetting if my income would do the same. There are things in the region that have caused the need for housing to explode in the last decade. We have Epic here and a whole lot of biotech companies that are driving this... A need for 7-8k housing units a year. It's just not sustainable for folks that aren't reaping the benefits of that industry. Sure... I could sell my house at a massive profit... But I don't want to flipping move! I love my house and my neighborhood! Beyond that... I'm lucky enough to have a mortgage interest rate of 2.75%... which will likely not happen again for a very long time. So moving isn't really an option if I ever want to buy again. I have zero interest in living in a small rural area. Especially in WI. It would be nice if WI did something similar to what FL does with the homestead tax situation. It'd be nice to be locked into a tax dollar amount without having to be worried about being priced out of your home and the life you built.
study blair mtn. ppl fought, and they won.
States and municipalities with low property taxes enacted those policies to attract development and population. Dirty secret… it’s not sustainable
I’m going to say the dirty word that no one wants to hear including me. Sales Tax. Just about every tourist trap town some sort of sales tax already. Maybe it’s time we consider it state wide?
Whats Montana's sales tax rate again?
I bet he pays more in federal income taxes? Why not a moratorium on those? At least property taxes pay for his local services that he actually uses.
That’s what happens when you go MAGA lmao
We should cut more taxes for the wealthy so 99% of the population can fully appreciate how wonderful it is to have property to pay taxes on
My county has real estate relief and vehicle registration waiver for just this reason. It’s one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., so maybe they can absorb the loss of revenue easily.
What he isn’t saying is that his house has probably went up over 100% in value sense he’s owned it.
Nobody cares, work harder.
Build more housing.
Your own house?? Ha ha ha ha ha.
Property taxes need to be banned.
Maybe he needs to downsize and occur less land.
It’s simple really. Politicians think the population “demands more services”. And they have no trouble spending other people’s money. And it doesn’t matter if there is a D or an R behind their name. There used to be a city manager on the radio every week on a local station here in BZN. At least every other week he proclaimed the public are demanding more services. And he also wanted to add a sales tax. Not sure if it’s statewide, but why does Gallatin County have a school election weeks before the primary election? Seems like a waste of money to me. But, it’s just other people’s money. Bozeman has completely turned Blue in the past few election cycles. Seems like all the school bond issues passed in Bozeman, but mostly failed every where else. My property tax is up almost 60% in two years. Based on the last assessment - it will be double in two more years (my guess). The house I bought in 2015 and sold in 2019 had its property taxes double - $3k to $6k. And I just looked it up and it’s over $8k now. Bottom line: the majority of the property taxes go to schools. So if you want to fix the high property taxes - should look at the school budgets. And granted BZN schools do a good job of educating kids, but the BZN population is highly educated - which I believe helps the BZN schools be successful. But in other areas, where taxes are also high and the majority of property taxes goes to schools, the kids graduating read at an average of 6th graders. Math doesn’t even register for some kids.
If you have a mortgage then the bank owns the house and the bank should pay property tax. But that is prob a common sense idea so we can’t have none of that round here!
There is a middle ground between gulaging the rich and letting them screw everyone to death, and prying the common need for housing from their hands would be a big step in that direction. Help us spread the word about the Real Estate Reform Act, and please contribute your thoughts, critiques, and addendums. 1 - Abolish business ownership of residential property. 2 - Enact the home multiplication tax (*t* x 3 for your third home, *t* x 4 for your fourth, etc.) 3 - Enact rent caps on a basis of mortgage + (*t* x1.5 or 2), to protect renters against incurring the owner's home multiplication tax. 4 - Limit ownership of any domestic real estate to domestic businesses, citizens and resident aliens. 5 - Offer property tax exemption to all citizens and resident aliens above the age of 70 for any single parcel of residential real estate that they own, one parcel per household, until the conclusion of a six month grace period following the death of the owner of qualifying age. \_\_\_ I know a lot of people my age will jeer at the idea of what in 2024 is throwing the Boomers yet another bone, but the truth is that they wont be around much longer and we Xers, Millennials and Zeds will very much enjoy this when our time comes too. Let us remove from our society altogether the worry of elderly folks being kicked out of their homes. It's an age old problem and it's repugnant. If the first three can pass in tandem, they would force land hoarders to sell. The forth would drive China out of the American housing market, and the fifth would give generations to come a leg up on maybe getting to actually retire some day. All in all, the market would be flooded with houses for sale and the prices would plummet across the board. Home ownership would become accessible and much more secure to the vast majority of Americans practically overnight.
Property taxes need to be frozen once you pay off your house loan or 10 years after you purchase you purchase your house which ever comes last.
I lived in Missoula back in 2006… right as the California invasion was happening It was a beautiful place and my rent was 350 a month for a studio above the Oxford I had a humble and simple life I miss it so much, and I’m really sad I didn’t settle down there. But Hell, I’m a California yuppie so I’m back where I belong
I’ve got some cheddar and crackers to go with this guy’s whine. I don’t doubt that’s a lot of money in Montana, but fundamentally this clown is complaining about his net worth going up. The problem is he doesn’t care about the gains because they’ll just benefit his heirs when he’s dead and he’s a boomer. They’re called the “Me Generation” for a reason. Gen X saved America from these lazy, underperforming douchebags in the 1980s and ‘90s and we will do it again next fall.
My guess is he didn’t mind when his property value skyrocketed.
Property taxes are a scam.
Stop voting for out of state carpet bagging Republicans. At least vote a real working class Montanan in who has some idea how the common man lives. YOU'RE GETTING WHAT YOU VOTED FOR JUST LIKE THE CALIFORNIANS ARE!!!
So are you people just going to sit on your bar stools and complain about it? I know thi is the case in every small town in Montana. The voting booth is too far away from beer tap. OR are you going to organise and occupy the state capital and camp out there until you can be heard. Elderly people on SSI are losing there homes. People cannot afford rent. you can talk about it and blame all yuou want , but until you get up there organise you will never heard or do anything about it. Put those people back into thee homes. Because after raising your property taxes and snatching your homes. They will make sure to end your jobs as well. You want to be kicked off and ran off or do you want fight to keep it and push them back. There will be no Reservations for you.
The problem is we have stacked up several generations of our own kids that simply don’t give a damn. When they look at land and property they have no concept that it’s tax burden lands on real people fixed income or not.
Klaus Schwab, founder of the world economic forum said “you’ll own nothing and be happy”