wyofile.com · Maggie Mullen · September 4, 2026
Wyoming Legislature to consider abolishing property taxes through constitutional amendment - WyoFile
# Wyoming Legislature to consider abolishing property taxes through constitutional amendment
After creating a complicated web of residential property tax exemptions, Wyoming lawmakers are now weighing whether to eliminate property taxes entirely.
by Maggie Mullen June 4, 2025 October 13, 2025
Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper, on the Senate floor during the 2025 session of the Wyoming Legislature. (Mike Vanata for WyoFile)
As Wyoming lawmakers sought to provide homeowners with property tax relief in the past few years, new laws created a complicated web of exemptions, leaving some taxpayers confused and frustrated.
# As a WyoFile member, you make stories like this possible. Thanks for being on our team!
“Taxpayers often struggle to determine which exemptions they qualify for, when and how to apply and which forms are required,” Crook County Assessor Dan Thomas told a legislative committee Wednesday.
“As a result, we see misapplications, missed deadlines and a rising frustration, both from taxpayers and from the county offices working hard to assist them,” he told the Joint Revenue Committee at its meeting in Gillette, where he represented the Wyoming County Assessors’ Association.
“While each of these measures provides meaningful tax relief, taken together, they have introduced a significant level of confusion for taxpayers,” said Thomas, who asked for better communication in future decision-making.
No committee members objected to Thomas’ characterization of the Legislature’s work product. In fact, several agreed.
The committee’s solution to the property tax confusion the Legislature created? Abolish property taxes entirely.
“We need to shift to a new system,” Casper Republican Sen. Bob Ide said before bringing a motion to draft a bill repealing most of Article 15 of the Wyoming Constitution.
If passed by the Legislature and approved by voters, the proposal would eliminate all property taxes — residential, commercial, industrial and personal — which brought in $2 billion in revenue in the 2024 tax year. That’s more than any other tax stream in Wyoming.
The committee voted 11-3 in support of the motion. Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, and Sens. Cale Case, R-Lander, and Stephan Pappas, R-Cheyenne, were the three opposing votes.
“A sales tax is the only way we’re going to muck out all of this layered minutia of property taxes,” Ide said.
But such a sweeping change is how lawmakers got themselves in a pickle to begin with, Case told the committee.
Republican Sen. Cale Case of Lander during the 2025 legislative session. (Mike Vanata/WyoFile)
“We’ve got complicated things on the books that we created — the people in this room created — and we’re mad about that. And that’s what happens when you throw bills out there, and vote on bills, and get the public behind them and then get them out and passed without really thinking of the ramifications,” Case said. “We need to study the topic first before we throw a resolution out to eliminate property taxes from the constitution.”
The committee also voted to modify two property tax exemptions already on the books, including repealing a sunset date for one and eliminating an owner-occupied requirement for another.
Property taxes do not fund state government. Instead, they pay for local services like county fire departments, K-12 education and transportation, senior centers, hospitals, water and sewer, community colleges, law enforcement, libraries and the construction or maintenance of roads and sidewalks.
As a result of recent property tax cuts, many local governments across the state are now facing revenue shortfalls.
“We’re struggling right now with what services we can maintain, or where we’re going to have to start cutting,” Weston County Commissioner Ed Wagoner told the committee, pointing to a $220,000 revenue loss this year.
Such a dip may be inconsequential to wealthier counties like Campbell, he said, but not Weston.
“Every county is different,” he said.
That type of unequal footing is reason enough to look at another system, Rep. Bob Wharff, R-Evanston, said.
“I’m leaning towards this. I think it’s a novel idea, and I think it’s something we need to look at, because I don’t know how we take something that’s already unequal,” Wharff said.
Relying more heavily on sales and use tax, Case said, won’t change the fact that there is simply an unequal distribution of where commerce occurs across the state.
“You would still have a distributional problem with a consumption tax,” he said. “Take Niobrara County, for example, and say, ‘All right, people, your county is going to be funded by consumption, and it’s the consumption that occurs in the county. There’s nothing there. There’s very little exchange.”
Storer also cautioned lawmakers that if the state shifts to sales and use, it would require quite a hike to make up the difference.
“We’re only collecting about $1.4 billion in sales and use tax currently,” Storer said. “So if you just do some quick math there, that means we’d at least probably be doubling our sales tax.”
Chairman Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, said he was uncertain where he stood on eliminating property taxes, but was interested in how it could ease the limitations of reforming property taxes within the confines of the state’s constitution.
“We constantly see this, ‘it’s unconstitutional, it’s constitutional’ when we try to make a change. So from that perspective, I want to see what this looks like,” Locke said.
The committee’s next meeting is Aug. 21 in Casper.
It’s no secret that trust in news has diminished in recent years. Over the last two decades, roughly 3 in 5 American newspapers have vanished, meaning far less light shining on the issues that impact you. With the rapid rollout of AI making it even easier to surround you with misinformation, disinformation and even outright lies, you need reporting you can trust to provide the basic facts.
## Join the Conversation
Other important things to know:
1. Shane Henman says:
July 13, 2025 at 3:29 pm
Eliminate property taxes for owners that have paid off their properties and are living in them. Keep property taxes for commercial and industrial. Raise the consumption tax to make up the difference. People that work their entire lives maintaining and paying off a mortgage SHOULD NOT BE PAYING PROPERTY TAXES. That’s the right thing to do.
Reply 2. Brenda Johnson says:
June 12, 2025 at 9:27 am
Our sales tax was 3%, ‘optional 1cent’ elections have already doubled sales taxes over the years, and if the trend continues, sales taxes will keep going up with or without property taxes. Everyone that spends money pays sales tax, regardless of age, sex, income bracket, marital status etc., not just the property owners. Property taxes should be unconstitutional because they stifle productivity, prosperity, and economic growth in the private sector. Landlords of residential & commercial properties are assessed property taxes on ‘unrealized’ gains of property values, as the values are increased the insurance increases with the taxes, the increases can only be absorbed so long, then the rents go up. When those rents go up, not only do residential tenants that have been priced out of purchasing face higher rents, but all the consumers and customers absorb the higher taxes and insurance through the costs of goods and services, and higher rents. The argument of sales taxes hurting lower income citizens doesn’t hold up to the argument of those same People paying hundreds more in rents, services, and costs of goods. Renters and property owners are all paying more, and our government is spending more! The money the government is taking from the People is not coming back to benefit the People equivalently resulting in the government controlling more of the earned incomes of citizens than the People themselves.