This is fun, watching Nevada legislators scramble over each other to figure out the best way to bring us, the long-suffering Nevada taxpayer, the best darn tax relief legislation they can pull out of their hats.
It seems like not a day goes by that somebody hasn't come up with another idea to lower our taxes.
Knock yourself out, I say.
Want to be popular? Want to be re-elected? Want to be the next governor? Then you better have a darn good way to lower property taxes, or rebate last session's tax increases, or set a limit on government spending.
I've never seen such a tax-chopping frenzy.
I'd advise you to keep an eye on your checkbook, though. With politicians, it's always good to know what the left hand is doing.
Most of the time, successful politicians have figured out they can stay in office as long as they practice the age-old art of pork-barrel politics. That's where they take your hard-earned money in taxes, spend it on something they think you would like and then give it back to you.
It's kind of like getting a set of golf clubs from your wife on your birthday, then discovering a month later that she charged them to your credit card.
So let's see where we stand ...
n Gov. Kenny Guinn has proposed giving us back $300 per vehicle registration from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
So far, I haven't seen any legislation to actually do this, although Guinn's probably going to submit something before the budget is due. At last word, legislators were tied up in knots trying to figure out exactly how a rebate would work.
Funny, but when they were raising taxes two years ago, they put a lot of effort into figuring out exactly how to get their hands in our pockets. What they couldn't figure out, they turned over to the Taxation Department and said, "Here. Figure this out."
When it comes to giving it back, well, that's a potentially insurmountable challenge.
My wife gave it a good two minutes of thought and came up with this: How about we drive over to the DMV, show them a copy of our 2004 registration, and they cut us a check or give us a credit? Maybe she's running for office, but I don't think so.
n Sen. Dina Titus wants to freeze property taxes. She says this is the quickest way to head off the immediate problem of turning widows and orphans out on the street when they discover their property tax bills are bigger than their Social Security checks.
Other legislators are skeptical, mainly because they don't want to give Titus credit and boost her campaign for governor. They don't say that, though. They say they want to fix the problem permanently.
n Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley has the $500,000 plan, which would cap property tax increases at 4 percent for anybody who lives in a house worth less than $500,000.
It's fairly obvious that Buckley is a Democrat from Las Vegas and not a Republican from Incline Village.
Nevertheless, the way home values are rising in Nevada these days, $500,000 is a middle-class figure in a lot of neighborhoods. I got an appraisal the other day on the shed that holds my lawn mower, and it's now worth $325,000.
n Sharron Angle brought the initiative petition that would have rolled back property taxes to something like 1 percent.
n Sen. Bob Coffin has a bill that could defer your property taxes in hardship cases until you sell the house or die. In other words, the only two inevitable occurrences in life would come at the same time.
n Sen. Bob Beers, the original DMV rebate advocate, is firing off state spending caps like a kid with a new toy pistol. We'll see if any hit the target.
n Assemblyman Richard Perkins has talked about constitutional changes that would allow the state to charge higher taxes on vacation homes. I say anything that sticks it to out-of-staters is a sure vote-getter. Can we charge them higher sales tax, too?
n Not to be outdone by state lawmakers in Carson City, the Las Vegas City Council endorsed a cap on property tax increases of "not less than" 6 percent. That's a courageous stance. I'm thinking of telling my boss I will accept a cap on my annual salary, as long as it's not less than 6 percent annually.
I'm sure there are other ideas floating around out there, but I've pretty much got all my head will hold at this point.
At this point, though, I'm not seeing much discussion of a solution to the basic problem: reassessment of property values.
My house has roughly doubled in value since I bought it. Why? Because some of my neighbors sold their houses at market value.
In other words, they presumably saw a nice return on their investment. And the people who bought the house obviously thought it was worth the price, or they wouldn't have done it.
Isn't this what people are really saying? They've lived in the house a long time, and they don't want to sell. They're seeing no profit from the rising "assessed value" of their home, and they certainly haven't seen an 80 percent increase in governmental services in their neighborhood.
This is the provision of California's Proposition 13 not dealt with yet in the current debate - reassessment happening only when property changes ownership. It's the scariest part of Prop 13 for governments.
Proposition 13 has some flaws, because it covers commercial property the same as owner-occupied homes. Nevada can get around that issue, I think, although this could be the trickiest part of the whole property-tax debate.
But if a goal of all this talk is to head off a taxpayer revolt, lawmakers are going to have to confront all the issues.
n Barry Smith is editor of the Nevada Appeal. Contact him at editor@nevada appeal.com or 881-1221.
