House decks Democrats on plan to cut property taxes

TOPEKA — The Kansas House has voted down a Democratic property tax reduction plan that they say would have saved Sedgwick County taxpayers about $7.4 million a year.

On a 41-76 vote, representatives on Tuesday rejected the proposal to restore state payments to local governments for property tax relief. The $7.4 million for Sedgwick County would have been part of $45?million in relief statewide.

A competing Republican plan has yet to be voted on on the House floor.

Democrats tried to tack their proposal into a routine bill allowing county treasurers to accept partial payments of delinquent property taxes.

The money would have been transferred from the state to local government coffers, to be used for the sole purpose of providing property tax relief, said Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita.

Ward said Kansas did that from 1938 until 2004, when, facing a budget shortfall, the state cut back on relief funds for local communities.

“We got about 10 Republican votes and all the Democrats,” Ward said.

Rep. Nile Dillmore, D-Wichita, said state cuts in recent years have increased pressure on counties and cities to increase property taxes.

He said he thinks if you asked Kansans what they want to do, “overwhelmingly they’d say our property tax is too high.”

Gov. Sam Brownback and Republican leaders are favoring reductions in state income tax rates instead. The House taxation committee on Monday passed a modified version of the income-tax buydown that Brownback introduced in his State of the State speech early this year.

Both the Democratic and Republican plans would have tapped into increasing state revenue to fund tax relief.

The plan that emerged from the taxation committee Monday follows Brownback’s general emphasis on using rising state revenue to buy down the property tax rate. But it wouldn’t lower rates as much as the governor proposed and would leave in place federal deductions that Brownback wants to do away with on state income taxes.

It also would delay elimination of income taxes on some types of business organizations, including sole proprietorships, farms, limited liability companies and Subchapter S corporations. The committee proposes a five-year phaseout of the tax on those businesses; Brownback wants to get rid of it immediately.

The committee plan also would wipe away all “refundable” tax credits, including the earned income tax credit, which rebates taxes to low-income single parents. Brownback favors doing away with that tax credit and shifting the money to social programs directed at the poor.

Contributing: Brent D. Wistrom of The Eagle

Reach Dion Lefler at 316-268-6527 or dlefler@wichitaeagle.com.

Read the rest here:
House decks Democrats on plan to cut property taxes