Last year marked an unprecedented tax year, landing Utah homeowners with unusually high 2022 property tax bills thanks in part to the state’s surging home values, plus a shift in tax burden to make up for property types that paced behind those dramatic gains.
This year, the problem isn’t going away. Rather, it’s even more complicated, especially as Utah home values dipped from their peak last spring as the housing market comes to terms with rising interest rates that now exceed 7%.
If you’re confused about why your property tax bill is higher this year — with or without a proposed tax increase — although your home value might have gone down slightly, you’re not alone. In some areas, Utah homeowners are even seeing their values rise, but their tax burden decrease.
What’s up with that?
It’s an issue state tax officials and local assessors are grappling with again this year, trying their best to explain to perplexed taxpayers that it’s largely thanks to “tax shift,” a phenomenon in Utah’s tax system that has had an outsized impact on residential Utah property owners in recent years as home values have risen exponentially faster than other properties such as commercial real estate.
A big part of the problem is assessors have far more information available to them to accurately value residential properties than they do commercial property types.
And it's something Utah lawmakers are hoping to fix, creating what they see as a more predictable and fair tax burden to Utah homeowners.
Read more about what a "tax shift" is and what Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, wants to do to address the problem.