The ‘mission’ (no pun intended) of a tax collector it to provide the public with fair market value of real and personal property and to comply with local laws per that county and our state have enacted to set up a taxing system.  We can be taxed on our real estate holdings, mobile homes, air craft, motor vehicles and property used in the operation of a business. In Utah, property tax notices go out mid to late summer for you to review and accept/pay or protest.  School districts in the state take up almost 60% of tax revenues collected in the state. Your County Assessor’s computers determine a property’s value and if it’s residential the owner will automatically get a 45% deduction from their home value to determine the taxable rate, which means you pay taxes on 55% of your home’s value.  We are blessed with a relatively low tax rate here. BUT be glad you don’t live in say, Los Angeles where as of last April high end homes are now subject to a ‘mansion tax’ that levies a fee on transfers of real property that sell for over $5 million. Revenue from the tax will fund affordable housing and services to combat homelessness in the city.

We don’t have transfer taxes in Utah. The story I was told when I got my real estate license years ago that we as REALTORS made a deal with the Tax Assessors to give them sales data each year so that the Assessor could calculate property taxes in exchange for not levying transfer taxes on the sale of land, homes, condo, commercial buildings and multiplexes. This tax has nothing to do with capital gains taxes on profits that the IRS charges.  Our legislature has not considered charging any transfer tax in some time and well, there’s an argument for and against them on both sides of politics to either keep taxes low or tax more and give the funds to worthy causes like funding homelessness programs.

As you can imagine many California millionaires are challenging this transfer tax in the courts and there are huge arguments if this kind of tax will have any effect on the local economy. Some say it will have zero impact and others say that L.A. is going to lose millions of dollars in revenues. Wealthy homeowners and buyers are just like anyone else-they want to pay the least amount of taxes and save as much money as possible when selling a property. Some sellers who thought of asking $5,025,000 might list their home instead for $5 mil just to avoid the taxes which will unfairly effect comparable sales. Some think that this kind of tax will discourage flippers and speculators. We shall see.

MORE INFO ABOUT YOUR PROPERTY TAX: www.slco.org or call 385-468-8000 or call your local assessor 4info!