SALT LAKE CITY — Last year marked an unprecedented tax year, landing Utah homeowners with unusually high 2022 property tax bills thanks in part to the state's surging home values, plus a shift in tax burden to make up for property types that paced behind those dramatic gains.
"You have this unpredictability for taxpayers. I wish taxpayers had the same tax predictability that our entities have," McCay told the Deseret News. This year, even though homeowners might not see such a drastic change in their property tax bills compared to 2022, the gap between commercial tax burden and residential tax burden continues to grow.
"This fluctuation is most notable in residential properties, which have tripled during the study period," the assessors wrote. "Residential real property increased from 55% to 67% of total real property from 2013 to 2022." Under Utah's tax system, a property's tax liability fluctuates in part with the change in taxable value. If a property sees a value percent change greater than the average within a tax area, that property will see a tax increase. But if its value percent change is less than the average, it will see a decrease.
In 2023, that Tooele County property's value went down from $443,640 in 2023 to $422,456 in 2023, and even with a tax hike of $287, the bill went from $3,076 in 2023 to $2,482 in 2023. That's an example of tax shift working in a homeowner's favor, but Parkinson said Tooele County was an "anomaly" when it came to commercial shift away from homeowners this year because it saw a higher number of commercial sales in 2023.
"It might be one of the fixes," he said. It's still a work in progress, but McCay is exploring ways to revive the bill while also working with commercial property owners to address their concerns.