Revenue Committee meets again to talk about property tax reform bill

The revenue committee talked about property taxes again on Monday, debating if certain sales taxes should be raised to give property taxes some relief.

“All Nebraskans who own property would see on average a 20% drop in the property they pay for local schools so that would depend on where you live, some people that might be $5,000 and for some Ag producers that may be $20,000 so a 20% reduction is a big reduction,” says District 39 Senator, Lou Ann Linehan.

Senators displayed a list of everything that could see a tax increase. Some of these include pet services, motor vehicle repair, pop, water and candy.

Sen. Linehan also talked about the impact on schools since property taxes are used to fund them.

“We have 166 schools that get basically no state aid from the formula so no school, once we get this bill passed, will get less than 33.3% of their cost from the state,” Linehan said.

This bill was introduced in January so senators have been talking about this for a couple of months now.

Monday’s session did not make much progress, but they plan to speak again on Tuesday.