{"id":24855,"date":"2019-02-08T12:04:40","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T18:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=24855"},"modified":"2019-02-08T12:05:04","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T18:05:04","slug":"income-tax-credit-on-property-taxes-considered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=24855","title":{"rendered":"Income tax credit on property taxes considered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebraskans would receive a state income tax credit to offset part of their property tax bill under a proposed constitutional amendment heard Feb. 7 by the Revenue Committee.

\"Sen.
Sen. Steve Erdman<\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>\n

Introduced by Bayard Sen. Steve Erdman, LR3CA would place the amendment on the November 2020 general election ballot. If voters approve it, the Legislature would provide a refundable state income tax credit equal to 35 percent of the property taxes levied on real property in the state and paid by the taxpayer during the taxable year.<\/p>\n

Erdman said property taxes in Nebraska have outpaced the average property owner\u2019s income and that reducing property taxes is the No. 1 issue for Nebraskans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not working for agriculture, it\u2019s not working for the homeowner, it\u2019s not working for the commercial property,\u201d he said. \u201cProperty tax is a problem.\u201d <\/p>\n

Erdman said the proposed amendment would generate approximately $1.3 billion in income tax credits each year. If voters were to approve the measure, he added, it then would be up to the Legislature to decide how to fund it.<\/p>\n

Paul Von Behren of Fremont, who testified in support of LR3CA, said the open-ended nature of the proposal is its main virtue. The measure would set property taxes roughly equal to income and sales taxes, he said, leaving the Legislature to hammer out the details of funding local governments, the entities that levy property taxes. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe beauty, I believe, of Sen. Erdman\u2019s [resolution] is that it doesn\u2019t provide the solution,\u201d he said. \u201cIt simply turns the problem upside down in a way we\u2019ve never thought about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Truemper of Ashland also testified in support, calling the proposal a \u201cdramatic change\u201d that nevertheless can be paid for. <\/p>\n

\u201cI realize that this is a very tough pill to swallow,\u201d Truemper said, \u201cbut let me just add that people in the state of Nebraska have been swallowing this property tax issue for a long, long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Testifying in opposition to the resolution was Nicole Fox, director of government relations at the Platte Institute. She said the best way to reduce property taxes is to limit the property taxing authority of local governments, something the proposed amendment would not do.<\/p>\n

The measure instead could lead to higher income and sales taxes, hurting the state\u2019s economic growth, Fox said. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, we can\u2019t just pay people 35 percent of what they pay in property taxes without either making major cuts to the budget or enacting very large state tax increases,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Larry Grosshans testified in opposition on behalf of the Nebraska Association of School Boards and the Nebraska Council of School Administrators. He said the proposal would not reduce the state\u2019s overreliance on property taxes to fund schools and local governments or address the disparity between property taxes and state sales taxes. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it does is significantly reduce the state\u2019s revenue from income tax at a time when the state is already facing revenue challenges,\u201d Grosshans said. \u201cThis could be disastrous to those entities that depend upon funding assistance from the state.\u201d <\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on the proposal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nebraskans would receive a state income tax credit to offset part of their property tax bill under a proposed constitutional amendment heard Feb. 7 by the Revenue Committee. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-24855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revenue","tag-sen-steve-erdman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24857,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24855\/revisions\/24857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}