PUHI — Kauai County needs real property tax reform, but a 3 percent assessment cap for homestead and long-term affordable rental properties could provide relief for some families while county officials hash out a complete overhaul. That was the general
PUHI — Kauai County needs real property tax reform, but a 3 percent assessment cap for homestead and long-term affordable rental properties could provide relief for some families while county officials hash out a complete overhaul.
That was the general consensus of the committee that took on the assessment cap bill on Wednesday.
“I support the measure but we need reform, not Band-Aids,” said Council Chairman Mel Rapozo.
Glen Mickens, Kauai resident, said he’s all for that.
“We need a complete overhaul of the system,” he said.
Councilman Gary Hooser said, in his experience, it takes about two years to go through a tax reformation process.
“There’s so many moving parts,” Hooser said. “A taskforce would be put together to go through the whole tax code and it would take a year to do that, then coming up with the suggested changes.”
What’s happening on Kauai is many times when a property is sold at a higher price than its neighboring properties, those property values go up and with that, taxes go up.
An assessment cap would limit extreme changes in those taxes.
“Now, your property value won’t double. It’ll go up by 3 percent,” Hooser explained. “This protects owner-occupied homes and affordable rentals and it’s a strong protection against large fluctuations in the future.”
Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura said she hasn’t always been a proponent of the assessment cap, but she’s coming around to the idea.
“To me this doesn’t seem like a bad thing,” Yukimura said.
Though they’re still working out the details, the assessment cap could be implemented this year for the 2017 tax year, according to Steve Hunt, county’s real property tax manager.
If they did that, though, the first round of assessment would still be done manually. Hunt said an automated system would be more accurate and would cost the county potentially hundreds of thousands to install.
“I get a sense time is of the essence,” Yukimura said. “We could start the process manually and transition to an automated system if it’s working. Let’s try it and see.”
The County Council will be taking up the assessment cap bill at its meeting on Feb. 24.
