Taxes are a big focus state lawmakers have this year. More than 60 bills filed seek to tweak taxes we as people and businesses pay, from property, to coal, to manufacturing, to autos. We wanted a big picture take on how these bills might play off each other, so Wyoming Public Radio’s Jordan Uplinger went to the Wyoming Taxpayers Association (WTA).
The WTA has been a research and advocacy group since 1937. It lobbies for a tax system that’s justified, equitable, stable, and transparent for people and businesses in Wyoming.
“We're here to educate and understand all taxes they pay, and what those go to,” said Hank Hoversland, the association's executive director. Uplinger started by asking him which, of the nearly 70 bills the association is tracking, he’s paying particular attention to.
Editor’s Note: This interview was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Hank Hoversland: Residential property taxes are a major issue that is being considered by the Legislature this year. I think people need to understand what property taxes are and what they fund. So, we're monitoring a lot of property tax bills on residential property.
But I would say for the taxpayers association, one bill that we believe is good, that meets our cornerstones of taxation, is a reduction of the coal severance tax rate to 6%, just to bring it on an even playing field and to even that playing field of severance taxes for all of our mineral industries.
Jordan Uplinger: There are two important bills you touched on there. Obviously, the coal severance tax, we'll start with that, and then I want to transition over to that property tax bill that's been kind of controversial. With the coal severance tax, House Bill 75 would decrease the severance tax rate on surface coal from 6.5% to 6%. Can you explain just a little bit more in detail why this is, I think, the only bill currently on your website's tracker, that has clear support on it?
HH: Surface coal is the highest taxed mineral for purposes of severance taxes. So it's at 6.5%. Its competitors in oil and natural gas are down at the 6% range. So bringing it into competition on that is something that we think is important because we want to have equitable taxes on any mineral. And so we think that it's a good policy proposal that was brought forward.
JU (narration): Decreasing the coal severance tax rate is expected to bring in almost $10 million less in tax revenue next year for the general fund, the budget reserve account and the school foundation program. In 2027 onward, it’d be more like $8 million less. The Taxpayers’ Association is also tracking a number of bills for property tax relief or reform.
HH: So there's two competing bills that are going through right now. So House Bill 169 has passed the House, and that bill has a 50% exemption on single family residence structures, up to the first million dollars of fair market value. That does have a backfill provision in it, but it's only for half of the lost revenue.
Senate File 69 on the other hand, is the same 50% exemption on the first million dollars of fair market value, but that includes both land and the structure. And the Senate Committee of the Whole Bill removed the backfill. We believe that it's important that people understand where their property taxes are going. It's going to local governments and it provides services closest to the people. So the state providing a backfill is going to be a major debate that's going to have to be settled between the two chambers. But I think those two bills, while they have similar ideas, are going to have competing interests on the backfill for the local governments and those services.
JU: Is this how the WTA would have done it? Is this a controversial way to provide relief?
HH: We don't have a position on the backfill and where it could come from. There’s competing bills that's out there, and they’re sort of mirror bills, but they're slightly different. The Senate file is Senate File 153. What that does is that it creates a definition in statute of what residential real property is. It also keeps the assessment ratio on residential and the owner-occupied subclass at 9.5%. The House bill, on the other hand, is slightly different because it changes the assessment ratios for residential and the owner-occupied subclass down to 8.3%. So, those are the differences, and I think that's one way that the legislature can also provide relief.
JU: These are also bills that you're, according to the WTA, still monitoring. You don't necessarily support these bills yet?
HH: Correct, we don't support or oppose a lot of these bills, but we're monitoring them because they affect the tax base in Wyoming.
JU: On just a kind of broader note, we're going to be entering, both on a federal and state level here, an era of new conservatism. Do you think that moving forward we're going to see more bills, more politicians running on cutting taxes wherever they can across the board, or do you think that there is kind of a hard line where you can't really cut any more without affecting public services dramatically?
HH: I think we saw that in 2024, and that's why we do have this new era and this new leadership in the Legislature. And you know what? We welcome new ideas all the time. We think that taking a look at the whole tax structure and the tax system is a good idea. We've seen those promises from the chairman of the Senate Revenue Committee, and we look forward to working with him and the Joint Revenue Committee in this interim as they take on this bold idea of reforming the tax structure in Wyoming. We think we want to be a part of that conversation.
Getting back to your question on elections, I think what people need to understand [is] that these taxes pay for services, property taxes are the big one, they pay for local services. Take community colleges, for example. If they start to lose some of that property tax revenue, they're going to have to find other ways to increase their revenues and that might be on the backs of those students that are going to create the workforce of Wyoming. So that's going to be a tuition increase or something like that. If citizens start to feel this reduction in services with not a full backfill or different things like that, I think that may affect voters and how they feel. So it's something that's going to be in play for certain in the future. And we're going to work to educate the public on that and continue to educate and give good sound research and numbers to lawmakers and the public so that they understand what these services are and what the taxes paid are.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
