Amended Wyoming Property Tax Bill Heads For Decisive House Vote

UPDATE: The House has laid back a third reading of Senate File 69 until Tuesday, February 18. The legislature is off on Monday for Presidents Day.

The Wyoming House Of Representatives on Thursday made changes in a proposed 50 percent property tax cut bill to try to soften the impact of the bill on local governments.

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Senate File 69 as passed by the Wyoming Senate would give homeowners a 50 percent exemption on residential properties valued at up to $1 million dollars. The Senate version of the bill includes no backfill, or reimbursement, to local governments for the revenues that would be lost because of the tax cut.

House Tries To Lessen Impact On Local Governments

But the Wyoming House on Second Reading of the bill reduced the cap on the valuation of property from $1 million dollars down to $500,000. Another amendment required that property eligible for the reduction be lived in at least 8 months of the year. The people living there for that period could either be property owners or renters, so rental properties would be eligible for the tax reduction. But the amendment is aimed at wealthy people who live in other states, but may maintain a residence in Wyoming  that they only live in for a few weeks or months.

The House also voted in favor of providing $100 million in backfill for local government, with that amendment passing on a 40-20 vote. The bill now faces a third and decisive House vote, most likely on Friday.

Those moves potentially put the House version of the bill on a collision course with the Senate bill, which again, has no back fill at all. But the House version of SF 69 is somewhat similar to HB 169. That bill also cuts property taxes at 50 percent for properties valued at under $1 million.

If the House and Senate pass different versions of SF 69, that would mean that a conference committee, which would have to hammer out a compromise version of the bill. If that bill can win approval from both houses, the final bill would then go to Governor Mark Gordon for his consideration.