Late this past summer, Minnesota residents were relieved when our legislators finally got a budget bill passed and allowed our state government to get back to work. Now the surprises are surfacing about that very budget bill. One of the things contained in the final budget bill that was signed, is the elimination of the homestead credit for homeowners in Minnesota. Now, the legislators justify this action by saying that even though they eliminated the homestead credit, they put into the bill, language which will have county governments reduce the market value that our homes are taxed on.
It seems to me that our property values have been reduced on their own by market conditions. We didn’t need the legislators to attempt to make it look like they were going to help homeowners by reducing their taxable values in exchange for the elimination of the homestead credit. The other piece is, that it really doesn’t matter what the taxable value on our homes are, because our cities and county still need a certain amount of money to operate. So, if the taxable values are less, the county and cities will be forced to raise the mill rate, thus collecting the same amount of money needed to function.
There is talk among some legislators that when the session begins again they are going to try to repeal this part of the budget bill, so time will tell.