WalletHub recently released a new study which showed that Colorado was listed as having the sixth lowest property taxes in the country.
Hawaii came in first for the lowest property taxes and New Jersey had the highest. Colorado tied with South Carolina for sixth place. The “Mile High State” had a tax rate of only .57 percent. Colorado’s property taxes have consistently stayed low throughout the 2010s.
According to a CBS4 article, although Colorado has some of the country’s lowest property taxes the study also ranked the state as the 10th highest state for home value, with the median home value sitting at $264,400. For contrast, South Carolina’s median home value was $143,600. The median home value in the U.S., as of 2016, was $184,700.
The Gallagher Amendment is one of the main sources of the high property values. Adopted in 1982, the amendment required that residential assessed values comprise no more than 45 percent of the state’s overall assessed value. The non-residential properties make up the remaining 55 percent, according to the Denver Post.
According to a December Denver Post article, the Colorado legislature is toying with rewriting or repealing the Gallagher amendment which has caused residential assessment rates to plummet from 21 percent to 7.2 percent of a property’s value over the past 35 years. In 2019, the residential assessment rate is expected to drop to 6.11 percent if nothing is changed.
Colorado legislature previously tried to repeal the amendment in 2003 when the rate was at 7.96 percent but it failed. To repeal Gallagher, NFIB/Colorado State Director Tony Gagliardi said, it would take a vote of the people. “That is the challenge,” Gagliardi said, “to convince residential property owners to raise their own property taxes.”
According to an October opinion piece in the Daily Camera, small business in Boulder is suffering due to the Gallagher amendment.
“Blame the 1982 Gallagher amendment which was intended to protect against rising residential property taxes. Gallagher was placed on a statewide ballot and passed as an amendment to the Colorado Constitution. But now, 25 years later, this state law has created the unintended consequence of killing our small businesses,” Bart Costello said in the opinion piece.
