At 82 years old, one South Dakota woman thought her working days were over. But rising property taxes forced her to search for a job to keep her home. Pulling her oxygen tank behind her, she went around to local businesses until one finally hired her. According to South Dakota Rep. John Carley, her entire paycheck now covers her property tax bill.
Stories like hers are what motivated Carley to introduce legislation that would have repealed South Dakota's property tax entirely.
“The increases in property tax, it's keeping people from homeownership,” Carley said. “We see it on both ends of the spectrum. Older, and then of course the younger not affording houses because the property tax is too high.”
Carley, a Hazlitt Coalition member, authored a bill backed by Liberty Action that would have repealed property taxes entirely. It was unanimously voted down in the Senate Taxation Committee.
The committee vote closed one chapter of the effort, but Liberty Action activists were already looking ahead to the next.
“This is just the beginning, and we're going to keep hitting this hard,” said Liberty Action Field Manager Hannah Determan.
Determan said the bill was never expected to pass, but introducing it was important for another reason.
“I think we were expecting this to be an uphill battle,” she said. “It's going to take a while. And now the establishment knows that there is grassroots pressure building around this. I think that they're not going to see this go anywhere, even though they were able to shoot it down this year.”
Introducing the bill gets the property tax repeal conversation started in the news and with legislators, which is valuable in the long run and builds support for the issue.
“A lot of ideas like this are education to the public and it gets the wheels turning for the legislators,” Carley said. “I think it was very effective from that standpoint that it was in the news, it was in conservative discussions, it was in newsletters, people were reading about it, thinking about it, pondering. And then certainly for legislators to have a little bit of pressure that people are crying out for this and asking for help.”
The larger goal, rather than this year’s committee vote, was building the conversation.
“The first reaction for many lawmakers, sadly, was, ‘How can you possibly get rid of property tax? We need that money,’” he said. “And it just shows there's a Stockholm syndrome, sadly, of ‘We gotta have this tax.’”
Determan said one of the biggest challenges is that the idea of getting rid of property taxes is so unheard of that people have trouble conceptualizing the idea.
“It's radical, getting rid of the property tax is unheard of,” she said. “Obviously the establishment is pushing back against it because they don't even want to find an alternative solution. They don't want to do anything revolutionary. And obviously, property taxes, the more that we're contributing, the bigger the government grows, and the establishment loves the government. So I think that's just the hardest part right now is having those conversations and getting people used to the idea that this is what we're taking on.”
The effort is already shifting public discussion. Determan said Liberty Action petitions are filling up with signatures and people willing to volunteer. They also had citizens testify at the Capitol during the hearing on the bill. Legislators are taking note.
Carley said around half the legislators were intrigued by the idea of repealing property taxes.
“Those are the ones that said, ‘Wow, what a great idea. We could actually abolish property tax,’” Carley said. “They know this is paying rent for our homes to the government, and this is unending increases on unrealized gains and driving people out of their homes—particularly older folks who are on fixed incomes.”
He added that a handful of other states are discussing property tax abolition as well, which encouraged lawmakers.
“Of course, hearing from groups like Liberty Action and others saying, ‘Hey, this can be done and should be done and is the right thing for our citizens,’ that gave a little bit of encouragement as well,” Carley said.
Liberty Action and other supporters are just getting started.
“We're just going to have to keep at it with getting our message out there, building pressure, getting people to sign our petition,” Determan said. “And now that the primary election has happened, we know who our potential champions on this issue are going to be for the upcoming legislative session.”
She added that they will be questioning candidates across the state on property tax reform and identifying legislators who can move the fight forward.
Despite the setback, Determan believes it was worth it to introduce the bill this year.
“It might not pass this year, it might not pass next year, but it took 10 years to pass constitutional carry in South Dakota, and I'm sure people probably thought that was never going to happen,” she said. “I think this is something that we need to just keep pushing at and go harder and harder and double down every year. If we just call it quits after one bill dies one year, what does that tell the political class? It tells them that we're not serious. I think that we should stay optimistic and understand that this is an uphill battle and double down.”
For now, South Dakotans like the 82-year-old woman that returned to work to afford her tax bill will continue paying property taxes. But the issue isn’t going away—Liberty Action activists and Hazlitt members will make sure of it.
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