If you pay property taxes, you never truly own your home. - Sen. Bob Ide
This is what Wyoming Sen. Bob Ide tells me when I call him for an interview on Hazlitt Coalition members’ fight to repeal property taxes in the state. As a new homeowner myself, I’m immediately struck by it. It never occurred to me that we’re effectively paying rent to the government forever, on top of the mortgage we already pay.
“I just think it's the most immoral tax there is,” Ide said. “Number one, you already own your property; why do you endlessly keep paying taxes on something that you already own? We're really just renting from the government forevermore…I think people should be able to own their home, pay off their mortgage, and not rent from the government and get pushed out of it by just increased property taxes.”
Sen. Troy McKeown, who helped force the vote, sees it similarly.
"They paid their house off, still paying property taxes to the government–rent basically," he said.
I'd never heard property taxes described this way before. Why aren’t more people talking about this? Well, as it turns out, in Wyoming they are.
What surprised me most was that the proposal didn't emerge out of nowhere. For years, Liberty Action has pushed lawmakers to confront the fundamental injustice of property taxation and work toward its complete elimination. While the legislature stopped short of that goal, sustained pressure from the liberty movement helped drive a series of tax reductions, including a 25% exemption on the first million dollars of residential property value and a 50% exemption measure now headed to voters in 2026. Against that backdrop, it's no surprise that some legislators have begun discussing the next step: ending the property tax altogether.
At first, I assumed the failed vote was simply a loss. Liberty Action Senior Legislative Advisor Erik Mortensen told me otherwise.
He said supporters knew the bill faced long odds. The goal wasn't just to pass it—it was to force every senator to publicly reveal where they stood.
“We wanted to use this as a key vote in the Wyoming senate that of course the PAC could use this August to say, ‘These senators voted against residential property tax repeal,’” he said. “So the vote happened, and the two wins we were shooting for is: we get the vote passed, which obviously would be a win. If we don't get it passed, well, we're gonna connect the legislative season to the electoral season. So even if we don't get it passed, we've got a great vote that we can use to beat up on people for years and years and years.”
McKeown said the goal was simple: let voters see where their lawmakers stood.
"So their constituents can know where they stand," McKeown said.
Ide agreed that it’s important for constituents to be able to hold their representatives accountable for how they vote.
“It's always good to put the lawmakers on the record, especially on important bills like this,” Ide said. “If you know you're going door to door and they say, ‘What are you going to do about property taxes?’ Well, you’ve got to elect legislators that are sympathetic to letting you own your home eventually instead of just renting it from the government. And if your opposition is against that, then you can hold them accountable.”
Outside of the occasional story about squatters taking over someone's property, I'd never spent much time thinking about property rights. But what Mortensen told me changed my entire perspective:
“It's a disgusting tax,” he said. “We are taxed on our property for our entire lives, turning us into renters for life. So nobody in this country actually owns their home, because if you don't pay that property tax, the government will eventually just seize it from you and sell it out from underneath you. Do we have property rights, or do we not have private property rights?"
People shouldn't have to be renters from the government for their entire lives. They should actually own their property, especially if it's bought and paid for. - Sen. Bob Ide
As a new homeowner, the thought that the government could eventually seize a fully paid-off home over unpaid taxes is unsettling. If homeownership is supposed to represent security and stability, what does it mean if that ownership is never truly complete?
Inflation, which has dominated news cycles for nearly six years now, is very top-of-mind for those fighting for property tax repeal.
“We've got a good contingent of liberty-minded legislators, and they're coming from districts that have seen double value increases in their properties and their salaries haven't doubled, and you just can't keep up,” Ide said. “I think every state in the union in certain areas has the same problem. There's certain pockets in Wyoming, Jackson Hole, Sheridan, some of the higher wealth demographic, where it's pretty high-value dollar property and their increase has been extreme.”
Ide said there are cases where families that paid $25,000 for their home many years ago, are now paying that much annually in property taxes.
“If they did that to your stock portfolio by taxing you on the increases in the stocks you own, there would be so much blowback,” he added. “And it's the same thing. As [the value of] your home goes up, they tax you on that. That's money you never saw, may never see.”
The fight over property taxes wasn't just about taxes, and it wasn’t Right vs. Left, either. It exposed a growing divide inside the Republican Party itself. Ide argues the resistance isn't coming from Democrats.
“Wyoming, everybody thinks we're this deep red state, you get inside the ropes down there and we're purple at best,” Ide said. “You just can't win as a Democrat in Wyoming, so they run with an ‘R’ next to their name with none of the limited government values.”
Opponents of repealing the tax call it too extreme or unrealistic, claiming that it would cut too much of the government’s budget and make it hard to fund schools and local governments. Ide says that can all be accomplished with a consumption tax.
“That's really the fair way to do it,” he said. “And if you don't want to buy luxury items and, you know, we don't have a food tax in Wyoming right now anyway. So if you could own your home and you don't get taxed on your food, everything else is really nonessential. And if you're willing to pay an extra sales tax on top of what we have right now, which is pretty low, at least you have a choice, right?”
McKeown argues Wyoming already has the resources to reduce its reliance on property taxes.
"We have close to $36 billion in reserves in Wyoming," he said. "And we only have 590,000 people."
The more people I talked to, the more I realized Wyoming isn't alone.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly discussed eliminating property taxes. Similar conversations are happening in Texas. Supporters believe Wyoming has a chance to become the first state to actually do it—and if it does, they think other states will follow.
“When one domino falls, we get several others to fall behind it,” Mortensen said. “It might take years for the next state, but it shows that it can be done. And just in the political world, the thing we're always trying to combat is this mentality of ‘It's impossible, that can't be done,’ because everybody lives in their own little political reality. But our job is to change the political reality.”
Even though the vote failed in the Wyoming Senate this year, Hazlitt members are already gearing up for the next fight. But what may be even more important than the failed vote is the question legislators have put before voters:
Do you ever really own your home if the government can tax you on it forever?
This question stuck with me after my phone call with Sen. Ide, and I quickly emailed my own representative to request they start working on a similar proposal in my own state. If this issue resonates with you, call or email your own representative and ask where they stand on residential property taxes. Nothing will change if we don’t ask for it. That’s exactly how grassroots activism works–and it does work.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as my dad always said.
To join the largest grassroots liberty activist movement at Liberty Action, click here.
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