DES MOINES – An increase in assessed values for houses and farms has triggered growth in a property tax discount, the extent of which was announced Wednesday by the Iowa Department of Revenue.
Homeowners will only pay taxes on 44.08 percent of their property’s assessed value next year. That is roughly 1.5 percent more of a discount than was paid in the current year.
Farm owners will only pay taxes on 90.1 percent of their property’s assessed value next year, compared to no discount, or 100 percent, for the previous seven years.
The dollar values associated with the changes will not be known until local governments set their tax rates.
The discounts exist because of a two-decade-old law that limits the annual growth of residential and agricultural property taxes. The law, known as the rollback, says houses and farms pay taxes based on which of the two has gained the least in assessed value each year. The law also places a 4 percent annual cap on the growth of taxable values for both types of property.
By Dan Gearino, Capitol News Service
