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By Jon Coupal
On Wednesday of last week, Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 4, a major legislative effort to repeal the dreaded “Death Tax,” lost by a narrow margin (4-3) before the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. Although opponents of the tax will continue to pressure the Legislature to act, there is a powerful alternative to address the harm inflicted by this record-setting property tax hike.
Over the last forty-plus years, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has successfully qualified numerous pro-taxpayer initiative measures starting, of course, with California’s iconic Proposition 13, approved by voters in 1978. In 1996, HJTA qualified, and the voters enacted the Right to Vote on Taxes Act.
Now, HJTA and a broad coalition of minority organizations, taxpayer groups, and property owners will proceed with an initiative to restore the right of parents to transfer their home and limited other property to their children without reassessment to market value.
The legislative effort to repeal the death tax, authored by Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta, sought to reverse the provisions in Proposition 19 regarding intergenerational transfers of family property. Under Prop. 19, which passed narrowly in November 2020, property is now reassessed to market value upon transfer between parents and children, with only limited exceptions.
Support in the legislature for repealing the death tax was bipartisan, with Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, joining Sen. Seyarto and Sen. Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, in support of SCA 4.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Los Angeles County Assessor Jeffrey Prang, a sharp critic of Proposition 19, emphasized that voters were not informed of the complex and costly effects that Proposition 19 would have on property tax reassessment of long-held family homes as well as businesses built over generations. “These neighborhood markets, auto shops and family-owned restaurants are community staples,” he said, but they are “in jeopardy of closing their doors when they are hit with high tax bills.”
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