Amendment to Nevada property tax bill would steady annual caps on increases

An amendment to a bill modifying how much Nevadans’ property taxes can increase each year would eventually lock in an annual cap of 3 percent for residential property.

Just as it is today, the annual cap on property tax increases would be set by doubling the previous year’s CPI or finding the 10-year average for the growth rate of taxable property value, whichever is higher.

But the cap could not decrease from year to year. The residential property tax cap could only increase to a maximum of 3 percent, where it would become locked. For commercial properties the tax cap could continue to fluctuate between 3 and 8 percent each year, but it could not fall below 3 percent.

AB43 would mean a cap of 2.6 percent in fiscal year 2017-18 on both residential and commercial tax caps for Clark County and nine of Nevada’s other counties. NACO executive director Jeff Fontaine said he expects all counties would reach and lock in 3 percent in fiscal year 2018-19.

For homeowners, how much more or less they pay in property taxes each year would still be calculated by multiplying their home’s assessed value by the local tax rate. But no matter how much the tax rate or value of a home rose, homeowners wouldn’t pay more than 3 percent more in property taxes than they did the previous year because of the cap.

The proposed change to the law is to avoid a situation like Clark County had in fiscal year 2017. Under the current property tax laws, both commercial and residential property taxes were capped to increase by no more than 0.2 percent.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated how Assembly Bill 43 would affect property tax increases.

Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter.