What You Need to Know

Amendment B to increase Your property taxes

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For 38 years the Gallagher Amendment has served our citizens well by keeping residential property taxes affordable while avoiding massive tax increases that would force people from their homes.

Come November, that can all change!

Your vote to defeat Amendment B is vital!

Amendment B Repeals the Gallagher Amendment

What is The Gallagher Amendment?

The Gallagher Amendment is the ONLY protection taxpayers have against skyrocketing property taxes — THE ONLY PROTECTION!

In 1982, voters approved the Gallagher Amendment to become part of the Colorado State Constitution.

Put simply, the Gallagher Amendment mandates that residential property taxes must always be 45% of the state’s property tax revenue while commercial property taxes fill in the remaining 55% of the state’s overall property tax revenue.

The state legislature is required to regularly adjust the assessment rate on residential property in order to maintain this 45/55 ratio.

Has the Gallagher Amendment worked as intended?

Absolutely!

  • It has kept your property taxes affordable.
  • It has saved Colorado taxpayers $35 billion dollars.
  • This works out to saving $16,670 per Colorado homeowner/renter.

Shocking! What if the Gallagher Amendment had never been put in place?

This is a shocker: Your taxes would be at least three times what they are today!

Think about this: Whatever you paid for your property taxes this year, multiply that by 3.

When Gallagher was first enacted in 1982, the property assessment rate was 21% 

Since then the Gallagher mandated assessment rate adjustments have cut the rate by two-thirds resulting in an assessment rate today of just over 7%.

If Gallagher had never been enacted, it’s hard to say just how much higher than 21% the assessment rate would be in Colorado today.

What if the Gallagher Amendment is repealed?

According to the Colorado Property Tax Administrator, residential property owners will pay an additional $203,781,937 in property tax increases in the first year after repeal.

Over five years we will pay an astronomical increase of $1.02 billion!

Perhaps most galling of all, while homeowners/renters will face these increases, corporate special interests will see decreases in their property taxes.

How will a repeal of the Gallagher Amendment affect me?

Bottom line: Your property taxes will go up a lot more without Gallagher in place.

It’s not hard to get a glimpse of what a future without the Gallagher Amendment might look like for individual homeowners in Colorado.

We just have to look at the experience of citizens in states where taxpayers don’t have the protection afforded by the Gallagher Amendment.

Take Lisa Veglahn of Kansas City, Kansas for example. She has seen a 21 percent increase in her property taxes this year alone! For Lisa, it means nearly $400 per month.

Schools in New Jersey are proposing a 22 percent tax increase. Can you afford that?

FYI: The property tax bill for the average homeowner in New Jersey is $8,477.00.  The average homeowner in Colorado pays $2,046.00 — a testament to the efficacy of the Gallagher Amendment.

Here’s some headlines from around the US that may portend the future for Colorado homeowners if the Gallagher Amendment is repealed:

  • In NJ Higher Taxes Are Forcing People Out of Their Homes – CNB News
  • Home is where the hurt is: How property taxes are crushing Illinois’ middle class – Illinois Policy
  • School’s proposed 22% tax hike will ‘force some people to lose their homes,’ taxpayers say – NJ.com
  • ‘Enough is enough’: Some Seattle-area homeowners say latest property-tax hikes will force them to move – The Seattle Times
  • California residents fleeing to Nevada and Arizona as high taxes, home prices force them out – FOX News
  • Rising Taxes Force Older Residents Out of Johnson County –kansascity.com
  • Her home’s tax value nearly tripled. Now she worries: ‘I can’t afford to live in it.’ – The Charlotte Observer
  • Could rising tax values force some out of Charlotte’s homes – The Charlotte Observer

A Future Without Gallagher

If Gallagher is repealed, not only will schools be clamoring for massive increases, but so will fire districts, hospitals,  police departments and other services.

An army of special interest lobbyists will descend on Colorado lawmakers for their share. There will be a feeding frenzy!

The corporate special interests behind the push to repeal Gallagher have scores of lobbyists and are afforded many, many tax breaks by the government and they know how to work the system in their favor.

Homeowners don’t have any lobbyists.

The Gallagher Amendment is the ONLY protection property owners have against skyrocketing property taxes as our property values increasethe ONLY protection!

A future without the Gallagher Amendment is scary.

 

Study Amendment B

It’s important that you are an informed voter.

Please take a minute to learn more.

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