The Ongoing Property Tax Debate - California's Proposition 5
Election season is fast approaching and eleven propositions are on the California ballot. The perennial challenge is to find the time to learn enough about each one to make informed choices, so I hope that providing a historical context for Proposition 5, currently on the ballot, is useful. Proposition 5 addresses the transfer of a home’s taxable value, in a long line of predecessor propositions addressing this same issue. Here is a brief survey of the related propositions, each of which amended the well-known and hotly-debated Proposition 13 to change who can transfer their home’s taxable value and how the transfers work.
Proposition 13 (1978): Decreased property taxes by using 1976 assessed property values, set tax rates at 1% of a property’s sale price, and capped annual increases at no more than 2%. Reassessment of a new base year value was prohibited except in the case of a change in ownership or the completion of new construction.
Proposition 58 (1986): Allowed the transfer of a primary residence between spouses or between parents and children without a reset on the home’s taxable value. In other words, the recipient of a house, whether a spouse or a child, would continue to pay the taxable value based on the limit set following the 1976 tax assessment.
Proposition 60 (1986): Allowed homeowners age 55 or older to transfer the taxable value of their present home to a replacement home, assuming the replacement home was of equal or lesser value, located within the same county, and purchased within two years of selling the original home.
Proposition 90 (1988): Allowed homeowners age 55 or older to transfer the taxable value of their present home to a replacement home in another county, but only if the county in which the replacement home is located agrees to participate in the program.
Proposition 193 (1996): Extended Proposition 58 by allowing grandparents to transfer their primary residence to their grandchildren without a reset on the home’s taxable value, when both parents of the grandchildren are deceased.
Proposition 5 (2018): Extends Propositions 60 and 90 by allowing homeowners age 55 or older, severely disabled, or who have contaminated or disaster-destroyed property, to transfer the taxable value of their present home to a replacement home, no matter the value of the replacement home, its location, or how many times the buyer has moved. The difference in market value between the present and replacement home would adjust the taxable value upward if the replacement home is worth more than the present home and downward if the replacement home is worth less than the present home. From Ballotpedia, the calculations are as follows:
Upward adjustment: (taxable value of present home) + [(replacement home’s market value) – (present home’s market value)]
Example: An individual sold her house for $500,000. The house had a taxable value of $75,000. She bought a replacement house for $800,000. The taxable value of the replacement house would be ($75,000) + [($800,000) – ($500,000)] = $375,000.
Downward adjustment: (taxable value of present home) × [(replacement home’s market value) ÷ (present home’s market value)]
Example: An individual sold his house for $500,000. The house had a taxable value of $75,000. He bought a replacement house for $300,000. The taxable value of the replacement house would be ($75,000) × [($300,000) ÷ ($500,000)] = $45,000.
It is once again up to the voter to decide if this is a ballot initiative that will continue to ease the homeowner’s tax burden and promote a culture of homeownership, or if it will continue to build up the tax disparity between older homeowners who pay lower tax rates and are disincentivized to move, and younger renters who want to buy but can’t afford the cost of entry at higher tax rates and suffer from a housing shortage. Affecting both sides, Californians are some of the most highly taxed people in the country, and the loss of revenue created by lower property taxes has resulted in higher taxes everywhere else.