Letter To The Editor: Taxation Out Of Whack
Author: Richard Tramp
Taxation Out of Whack
Taxation is one of those things that comes with life. Sometimes you just want to know why and how the process works when your taxes have increased by forty percent. I started with the people who should know the Broadwater County Revenue Department. I recommend that people go and sit down with Bill Jarocki in the county courthouse. Bill is very knowledgeable when it comes to our taxes and also with county budgeting. What I found out encouraged me to call our state representative and write a letter to our governor, Greg Gianforte, with my concern of our property tax inequality. After some thought, I called Broadwater County's state legislator, Julie Dooling. Julie indicated our governor was putting together a commission to fix the property tax issue. If the state legislators don’t do something radical to fix the way our property taxes are assessed in three years, we will get another major increase in property taxes. One issue with the way the state assesses property taxes is all property owners do not pay the same amount of the tax burden. Another problem is the huge tax increase homeowners were assessed did not go to our schools.
Here is just an idea, stop using assessed property values to stimulate property taxes. When people come to Montana and pay high prices set by greedy sellers, values get out of control. We could go with using the national rate of inflation instead of property assessments of market value, which for the last three years were and are around six percent or less, which is reasonable. After all, our county and school budgets are restricted to half the rate of inflation. We need to stop this injustice of unequal tax burden being imposed on the people of Montana. Why should we let the influx of out-of-state people change our way of life?
I’m a retired resident of Broadwater County with a limited income that increases by one or two percent a year. With inflation at twenty percent and when you add property tax and insurance increases it really hits home. The one thing we have is our voices to encourage change with our legislators.
Thank you,
Richard P. Tramp
Townsend, Montana
