A bill that was passed in the final moments of the Iowa Legislative session was recently signed into law.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green (R-Boone) says House File 718 saw some changes to the original bill about property tax reform. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio the two changes the House made that were added to the final version included a “Truth in Taxation” component, where any change in someone’s parcel specific property taxes, they would receive notification of that change; as well as having all bond-related elections held in November. 

Green points out another important aspect of the new law is a formula to recalculate levy rates based on a county or city and their revenue growth. 

“When you’re in a time like this where you have huge increase in assessments or you have a city or a county that’s experiencing tremendous growth, this new formula will kick in a new levy rate in those situations to where that forces some of that new growth to go into buying down some of the property tax burden. And it also forces local officials to vote on raising the levy if they want an increase in revenue.”     

The bill is separated into three categories, with revenue growth of less than three percent, those with 3-6 percent and over six percent. Finally, Green says they increased exemptions for two certain groups of people.

“We expand some of the exemptions for 65 and older. We increased the exemptions to $6,500, as well as increasing exemptions for military to $4,000. And so when you see the advertising of this bill showing that there’s going to be $100 million of immediate relief in property taxes, a lot of that is due to these increased exemptions.”      

The bill was signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds on May 4th.