Taxes and life in small-town Wyoming

When I was a kid, my dad used to say that there are only two things you can depend upon — death and taxes. Death’s inevitability remains clear but taxes, well, that’s another story.

Property taxes in Wyoming have risen dramatically, and in an attempt to provide relief to residential homeowners, the Wyoming Legislature passed several bills earlier this year. One offered a 50% reduction for homeowners over 65 who have paid residential property tax in Wyoming for 25 years or more. But the reduction is only for two years, only applies to the first $200,000 of fair-market value, and requires an application process with the assessor’s office. The Legislature also passed a bill giving a permanent 25% reduction to all homeowners for the first $1 million of fair-market value, but you can’t get this reduction if you request the 50% exemption on up to $200,000 fair-market value. In some cases, the 25% reduction would save a homeowner more than the 50%. You’ll have to figure it out yourself.

Less than a year after passing these property tax relief laws, many of the same legislators who voted for them now say the system is too complicated and confusing for taxpayers. To solve the problem they created, they now suggest abolishing property taxes altogether — residential, commercial, industrial, and personal — by repealing most of Article 15 of the Wyoming Constitution and raising the sales tax rate.

As sales tax is a flat percentage on all purchases, regardless of the buyer’s income, it puts a greater burden on lower-income households. Because there are certain things we must buy, we can’t simply cut back on purchases to save on our tax bill. This systemic advantage for those with higher incomes makes sales tax the least equitable tax system we could devise.

Another problem is that abolishing property tax would hurt municipalities and counties more than the state. That’s because property taxes do not fund state government. Rather, they provide the money we need for local fire and police departments, K-12 schools, roads and sidewalks, senior centers, hospitals, water and sewer systems, community colleges and libraries.

But here’s the real rub — property taxes brought in about $2 billion in 2024 while sales and use taxes provided $1.4 billion. If you abolish property tax, you still have to raise that $2 billion along with the $1.4 billion that the sales tax now generates, arriving at a total of $3.4 billion. To do this, the state’s 4.0% sales tax rate would have to more than double to 9.7%. Since the sales tax amount generated by counties is wildly uneven, ranging from $821.34 per person in Fremont County to $3,754.86 per person in Teton County, it would be very hard to provide equitable services throughout the state. It’s a formula for lawsuits.

Progressive income and property taxes were initiated to help us provide uniform public services to all, independent of wealth. For over a hundred years, we’ve accepted that the percentage at which one is taxed should be higher for those with higher incomes and greater wealth. I should say: sort of accepted. Some people ask, “You’re going to charge me at a higher rate just because I have more money?” Well, yes, we are because we need to provide public services for everyone and because some can afford to pay more and still have plenty.

Watching my father work so hard to earn so little, I can remember as a kid thinking it was wrong for some people to have great wealth while others scraped by. I didn’t know anything about politics or economics — I just had that feeling. Later, I learned that in the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles 4:32-35, Jerusalem was said to be a place where people were of one heart and one soul with property held in common and goods and services distributed to all according to need.

The late historian Ramsay McMullen, author of “Corruption and the Decline of Rome,” was asked by an interviewer if he could summarize the evolution of Rome in a single sentence. He said he could do it in three words — fewer have more. That’s what I see happening where I live, and it’s not good for me or my community. I hope we can create a tax system that will be fair to all while fully funding the needs of all, one that doesn’t place the greatest burden on those with the least wealth. We live, after all, in the Equality State.