Leadership in the Missouri General Assembly made property tax reform a top priority this year, with over a hundred bills filed by members in both chambers.
With two weeks left in the session, time is running out to place a reform bill on the governor’s desk, but legislators continue to advocate for change.
After years of rising home values across the state, property taxes have continued to grow higher.
Among the many bills introduced this session is House Bill 2780, sponsored by Rep. Tim Taylor, R-Bunceton, and carried in the Senate by Sen. Brad Hudson, R-Cape Fair. After struggling to gain traction on its own, nearly all of the bill’s provisions were carried over to the broader Senate Bill 1066, sponsored by Sen. Ben Brown, R-Washington. SB 1066 passed the House on April 23.
Taylor and the House Special Committee on Property Tax Reform, which he chairs, spent last summer holding six hearings across the state to gather concerns from residents and officials about the current property tax system.
The proposed legislation introduced this year could result in a major shift in the state’s current approach to property taxes. However, the legislation also raises concerns regarding funding for public entities such as school districts, EMS and fire districts.
Where property tax stands
Missouri’s current property tax system is known to be complex and notoriously hard to reform.
“Our property tax system is complicated; it’s complicated in such a way that if we don’t enact reform in a wise way, we are going to create unintended consequences,” Hudson said.
Hudson compared the current system to a “giant game of Jenga,” warning that changes made without careful consideration could lead to the destabilization of the entire system.
Property taxes in Missouri are largely controlled at the local level. Counties assess property values, and local tax jurisdictions set the tax rates. Those taxes fund essential services, including public schools and emergency services.
The system is regulated in part by the Hancock Amendment, a 1980 constitutional provision designed to limit how quickly taxes can rise.
“The Hancock Amendment states that if the assessed valuation of a jurisdiction goes up five percent or CPI (consumer price index), whichever is less, that they are to roll back their levies,” Boone County Assessor Kenny Mohr said. “Because reassessment is not supposed to be a windfall, it’s supposed to be revenue neutral.”
The consumer price index represents the average change in price for basic goods over time and is a common measure for inflation. Should the valuation increase in an area at a higher rate than CPI, then the Hancock Amendment requires rollbacks, ideally preventing tax increases from outpacing inflation.
However, the implementation of the Hancock Amendment to property taxes has faced ongoing challenges in practice. The amount that property tax assessments increase varies within the different property classifications, such as residential, commercial and agricultural. But rollback calculations are based on the total change in assessment within a taxing district, which legislators have argued leads to lower rollback rates in categories with larger increases in assessment, frequently residential.
According to the Missouri State Tax Commission, in 2014, Missouri’s total assessed property value was $97 billion, and in 2024, the number reached $152 billion, a 56% increase over ten years. From 2014 to 2024, in incorporated areas of Boone County alone, assessed residential property value increased 52%, while commercial value grew 26% and agricultural value fell 6%. Under current law, for purposes of determining rollbacks, these values would be averaged, and each of these categories of property would receive the same rollback, despite vast differences in growth.
‘Siloing’ and other solutions
As frustration over rising property taxes grows, lawmakers have proposed legislation to reshape the system and attempt to ensure fairer property tax rates.
One leading idea to help alleviate concerns over increases in assessments is often referred to as “siloing.” These siloing provisions have been amended into and introduced in a handful of bills, including HB 2780 and SB 1066. These siloing provisions would make it so rollbacks are determined individually for each property tax category, not based on the total change in assessment within a district.
Taylor spent ample time in committee arguing and laying the groundwork for this legislation.
“Ultimately, what this silo effect does is instead of having one tax levy for all the subclasses, it creates a tax levy for each subclass,” Mohr said. “Each one of those levies, each one of those subclasses is gonna be held up by the Hancock Amendment, just as the total aggregate is.”
In practice, legislators hope that this will help individuals pay property taxes on their homes, as home prices and assessments on home values have increased in recent years. Mohr noted in recent years that property tax increases have been nearly equal to assessment increases, which Mohr said is less than ideal.
“It would be more of a chance that that levy would be rolled back,” Mohr said. “And then (homeowners) might see an increase of you know, 10% in the valuation of their home, but their taxes might only go up two or three percent.”
Another provision of Taylor’s bill, also included in SB 1066, seeks to ensure that spikes in assessments to commercial property are accurately determined. The bill requires that if a commercial or other non-agricultural property’s assessment increases by more than 15% in one assessment, a physical inspection of the property must be conducted. Currently, physical inspections during 15% increases are only required for a residential property.
“So, an assessor can sit in their office and raise the assessed value of a commercial property an unlimited amount,” Taylor said. “And this bill says ‘No, if you’re gonna do it 15% or greater, they too have to come and do a physical inspection of your facility.’”
Other ideas
Many property tax bills put forward this year relate to transparency in election language when property tax ballot measures are put before voters. These policies would attempt to prevent misleading strategies from being used in the advertising and naming of property tax changes.
Subdivisions and election authorities would be unable to claim a proposed tax measure would have “no increase” in taxes in advertising.
Additionally, tax measures would be required to be named numerically and alphabetically on the ballot. This would prevent inaccurate nicknames from being attached to unrelated tax measures.
Moving property tax issues to the November elections and tweaks to the current senior property tax credit have been floated.
Also, on the table in some bills is the possibility to lower the minimum operational levy for schools to receive state education funding from the current $2.75 per $100 of assessed value.
Requiring assessors to use only the “cost approach” when assessing property has also been proposed, which effectively assesses property based on the cost to build the current property today. Proponents claim that of the three methods available to assessors, the cost approach best estimates real value. Opponents, meanwhile, argue that this approach would not take into account the interiors of homes and properties within the cost to build.
“Our patient is the taxpayers and the property tax system, and it’s bleeding out,” Taylor said. “We need to stop the bleeding so we can sit here, stabilize it, look at it and fix those nuances as they come forward.”
Hudson said he sees this push for property tax reform being driven largely by the people.
“The general consensus throughout my district, and beyond, I would say, is that the people want property tax reform,” Hudson said.
Despite a push for reform from constituents, Hudson said what the legislation looks like and what will pass are still up for debate.
“We’ve only scratched the surface with these few things,” Taylor said. “By far, though, if we can get this siloing done in the proper way, there will be great benefits to taxpayers and it will stop the bleeding.”
Local budget concerns
While lawmakers and homeowners emphasize the need to make property taxes more fair, changes proposed in the legislature have raised concerns among public entities that rely on revenue from their taxing district.
Hudson acknowledged the challenge of trying to balance these competing priorities.
“We’ve got a needle to thread,” he said. “You’ve got school districts and other political subdivisions that use property taxes to balance their budget, and you’ve also got constituents that have to pay property taxes and are trying to balance their budget.”
However, for emergency services, the stakes are immediate.
Larry Jennings, president of the Fire Fighter Association of Missouri, said departments across the state depend heavily on property tax revenue.
“For many of those agencies like fire and ambulance districts, the majority, if not 100% of their money, comes from those personal and real property taxes,” Jennings said.
Andrew West, assistant chief of Rock Township Ambulance District in Jefferson County, said the main concern is losing funding with no way to replace it.
Jefferson County is one of 22 Missouri counties that voted on Senate Bill 3 in April, passing a 0% property tax cap bill with an overwhelming majority.
Senate Bill 3, from the 2025 session, sought to place caps on property tax increases and was voted on by 97 of the 114 Missouri counties. Many counties with urban centers opted out of the vote, including Boone County.
West said rising costs have already made long-term planning more difficult, especially for equipment and vehicles.
“An ambulance that we’re buying now costs about $330,000, where six years ago the same exact model was about $200,000,” West said. “Now they take two to three years to get, so we’re constantly having to think two to three years ahead, and cutting property taxes just takes away part of our stream of revenue to pay for that equipment. So, it makes it really hard to plan for the future.”
Without a clear solution in place, Jennings said, revenue solutions to potential reductions in property tax revenue have not “been totally, clearly laid out.”
West said these changes could make emergency services like ambulance rides and EMS care more expensive for citizens.
“Right now, our average reimbursement (from property taxes) for a call is about $400. Well, it costs us $754 to run a call,” West said. “We’re going to have to pass on those increases to our patients, and then patients are going to be worried about calling 911 because they don’t have the extra funding to pay for those bills or those copays, even if they do have insurance.”
Concerns have also been raised about the potential effect of a lack of funding on emergency service response time.
“You start messing with some of these small districts, fire districts and ambulance districts and things like that, your response times might go from 15, 20 minutes up to 45 to an hour,” Mohr said. “So I mean, it can be problematic.”
One solution emergency service representatives have floated would raise sales tax in local districts to offset the costs.
Jennings noted that these alternative funding solutions may not work for many rural counties in the state, as they have smaller tax bases due to lower populations.
While his own district in Jefferson County has some funding protection due to existing sales tax, West said many other districts are far more vulnerable to these changes. He said that departments surrounding his area have already begun running models indicating they will need to shut down in the next five to 10 years.
As lawmakers continue to debate the details, questions remain about how changes to the property tax system could ripple through local communities.
Jennings said that without a clearly defined replacement plan, the consequences could be significant.
“I think without a doubt … there is a strong likelihood that many of those services are going to be affected,” he said.
Schools and libraries also receive a large portion of their funding from property taxes and could face similar concerns. Any reduction in local revenue could force difficult decisions about staffing, programming and resources.
With SB 1066 and many other bills moving in the Senate, statewide property tax reform is likely, but apprehension about unintended consequences remains.
