Gov. Rhoden Announces Homeowner Tax Relief Proposal
PIERRE, S.D. – Today, Governor Larry Rhoden announced his Homeowner Tax Relief Proposal during a press conference at the Capitol. Governor Rhoden announced that he will present this proposal to the legislature’s Property Tax Relief Task Force.
“We delivered a great first step to address property taxes with SB 216, and we are not done,” said Governor Larry Rhoden. “The people of South Dakota are looking for us to go a step further. They deserve a real property tax cut, and my proposal will deliver that for them.”
You can find a picture of Governor Rhoden announcing his proposal here.
Governor Rhoden’s Homeowner Tax Relief Proposal would be implemented in the following ways:
- Each county commission would have the option to directly reduce owner-occupied (homeowner) property taxes by replacing the revenue with a county sales tax of up to 0.5%;
- The funds raised from the optional sales tax would be placed into a Property Tax Reduction Fund at the county level;
- The use of the optional sales tax would be 100% dedicated towards directly lowering the county property taxes for all homeowners within the county;
- The property tax reduction would be achieved through a Homeowner Tax Credit, which would be paid out from the Property Tax Reduction Fund; and
- If owner-occupied property taxes in the county are fully offset by the Homeowner Tax Credit, any remaining funds in the Property Tax Reduction Fund must be used to lower property taxes among the other two classes of property: agriculture and other/commercial.
The Homeowner Tax Relief Proposal would be referrable to a public vote in each county, and it would shift a portion of the county tax burden to out-of-state visitors.
“South Dakota is already recognized as a top-three state for taxpayer return on investment by WalletHub, but there is more we can do,” said Governor Larry Rhoden. “Counties should have the opportunity to provide property tax relief and replace that revenue with another source. This proposal would bring that vision to a reality, and I am excited for the Property Tax Relief Force to drill down on the specifics.”
You can find additional information about the Governor’s Homeowner Property Tax Proposal here.
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Remarkable. A tax to offset a tax. Who thought this up. Should label it the shop at home bill or online. Why would I help Sioux Falls homeowners with their property taxes?
It’s county by county. Would only help Sioux Falls if you were shopping in minnehaha county. And taxes are collected from online sales and shopping at home and applied as city sales tax.
This shifts the burden to residents of counties near major urban centers.
For example, this will result in folks in Meade county paying higher sales taxes every time they shop in Rapid City. That will lower the cost of Pennington county real estate without doing a damn thing for the folks in Sturgis who foot the bill.
Lincoln County part of Sioux Falls would see next to no benefit because 90-95% of shopping done north of 57th St. (For those of you unfamiliar, that’s the street that marks the county line). Renters get hosed either way.
This helps counties with large urban populations at the expense of taxpayers in the surrounding rural counties.
For example, Meade county residents will pay higher sales taxes every time they shop in Rapid City, but they won’t see any reduction in their property taxes.
Who is paying for the county roads the Meade county residents are traveling on in Pennington County? It would literally be .50 cents extra for every $100 of purchases. Leave it up to the counties. If people don’t want to shop there because of the extra tax, they won’t have to. Tourists still will shop though.
Meade county residents will pay the higher sales tax without benefitting from a reduction in their property tax. Folks in Summerset will pay the tax, but get no relief.
Why wouldn’t folks in Summerset get any relief? Are there no taxable sales in the entirety of Meade County? What about the rally? Or Amazon purchases? The fact is residents of every single county could see some level of relief if their county commissioner were to enact the county sales tax option.
You’re dodging the fact that certain counties will disproportionately benefit from shifting their tax burden onto the residents of surrounding communities. This is welfare for the few at the expense of the many.
There are currently 6 or 7 school districts that do not receive any state aid at all. It’s all local effort. All of the sales tax generated in these districts are helping to fund the rest of the state’s school districts throughout the state aid formula. This proposal may help to level the playing field for these homeowners in the counties.
“Some level of relief”. But only the figures from a select few more prosperous communities are being used to sell this proposal. What are the figures for Meade, Butte, and even Lincoln counties?
“If people don’t want to shop there because of the extra tax, they won’t have to.”
What a clueless statement. Where else are people in Summerset going to shop?
I’m certainly not arguing for it. Just pointing out how it works. I’d like to see the numbers and projections to see how they came up with some of the rosy predictions.
Once a tax is started it will never go away.
Wrong, South Dakota repealed the State Inheritance Tax in 2001. Didn’t we recently lower Sales Tax from 4.5 to 4.2?
Well it was supposed to sunset and go back to 4 sooo kind of true, kind of not.
Sounds familiar.
This is weak. New tax for an old tax.
I’ll tell you what will happen – the populous areas with hotels, restaurants, and shopping will raise a pile of money from not only their locals but also people across the state.
Those of us in more rural areas will raise peanuts, see little to no reduction in our taxes, but pay pay pay when we go to the cities.
This should be a non starter. We need a bolder vision than this.
You realize that if you spend $100 on dinner that’s an extra 50 cents maximum based on this proposal. If you spend $1000 it will be an extra $5.00. Kind of dramatic with the “pay, pay, pay/non-starter” comment there? I can’t understand why South Dakota hates having tourists pay a larger majority of the services they are sucking up. We sure love putting this on the backs of property owners.
That won’t ever go up, will it?
I’m fine with paying a half penny or even a full penny for property tax relief. But it needs to be applied statewide to reduce property tax for all homeowners. Doing it by county is really not fair to the rural counties.
Question – does the Rhoden proposal only apply to the county portion of property tax? Or would it apply to the school portion as well? Another reason this needs to be at a state level – we need to lower the amount property tax payers are paying for schools – that’s where the big tax bite comes in.
Fundamentally, paying taxes on a house you own is a horrible thing to do to your citizens. Taxes should be on sales or possible even income. Not on something you own already.
It only goes to county portion