Letters to the Editor - Paul: Tax relief for property owners
Dear Legislator,
Our name is Owner-Occupied Taxpayer. Youve seen us many times. There are over 400,000 of our households statewide. There are 65,000 households with folks aged 65 or older. Weve been severely affected by the drastic increases in assessed property valuations since 2019. Even more difficult has been paying the increased property taxes. It’s very hard on working families to find the extra money. Those of us who are retired, elderly, and on fixed incomes, it means sacrificing some necessities in order to pay the increased taxes.
We heard you campaign about property tax relief. We voted for you. Now we wonder, was that really “public service” we heard or “Lip Service”. We need your help with this problem.
We’ve learned of a grassroots group: Tax Relief for Property Owners. They are suggesting a measure that would be greatly helpful. This is what they propose:
• Resetting assessed valuations back to 2021;
• Imposing an assessment limit capping future valuation increases to 5 percent per year;
• Having purchases of Owner-Occupied property after 2021 be assessed at the purchase price;
• Allowing improvements to our properties be added to our valuation at the cost of the improvements only.
This group: Tax Relief for Property Owners is a grassroots group of voluntary owner-occupied
property taxpayers wanting to work with you legislators to obtain timely and meaningful relief measures. We think their proposals certainly do that. We’d really like you to support their effort.
Allowing our valuations to be reset to the 2021 level would undo the spike we felt from the “COVID Complications” and unintended effects of the “Free South Dakota” campaign that brought so many to the state, increasing valuations excessively. We really liked the proposals of Tax Relief so much. We accessed their Facebook page – Tax Relief for Property Owners to check them out. We liked what we saw .... We got BRAVE.... We JOINED!!
Dear legislator: Please Be BRAVE... Help Us.
Robert Paul
Co-coordinator Tax Relief for Property Owners
