Murphy’s Law 2024 | #1 Property Tax Confusion Studied

This year has seen no Interim committee action with direct pertinence to your organization until this second week of February. Both the Taxation Committee and the Tax Relief Advisory Committee are meeting on back-to-back days. The Taxation Committee has to: Study the provision of a property tax exemption for elevators, warehouses, and other farm structures classified as commercial property, which are privately owned and used to store agricultural products produced by the owner or an individual related to the owner as defined in Section 10 06.1 12. The study must include consideration of the potential shift in property tax burden if the exemption were to be enacted, the definitions of agricultural property and farm plant as used in Section 57-02-08(15), and the impact of abandoned elevators, potato warehouses, and other farm structures classified as commercial property on the political subdivisions in which they are located, including the cost of refurbishment or removal.
This duty comes from the last few sessions whereby a bill has been introduced to address why farmers in one county pay a commercial property tax rate for a facility in town that had always been taxed in that manner while producers in another county may have it switched to agricultural rates when they buy it to use for their farming operation. In other words, the same situation but different political subdivisions resulting in substantially different rates. It is complicated and involves Attorney General rulings from different decades, terminology which continues to require further clarification through our Century Code and perhaps even new law which may have to spell out how to proceed to make sure that the situation is handled uniformly throughout our state. This appears to be the goal of the committee and hopefully it can result in a bill being introduced next January for the 69th Legislature. They ended with Chair Jared Hagert looking at a March meeting to continue the process and we will keep you informed. Here is the the full interim committee discussion.