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By Jon Coupal
It’s no secret that ballot initiatives can be confusing, but Proposition 19 takes obfuscation to a whole new level.
Voters can’t be blamed if they can’t remember whether Prop. 19 is the initiative that is a massive property tax hike or the measure that actually has something good for homeowners or the initiative that has something to do with firefighting. The fact is, all three are at least somewhat true — especially the part about the big tax increase.
Let’s clear up the confusion: Proposition 13, passed in 1978, gave California homeowners certainty about their future property tax liability because increases in the “taxable value” of property would be limited to 2 percent per year. Property would be reassessed to market value only when it changed hands. But that tax hike even applied when property owners transferred a property to their own children.
In response, voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment: Proposition 58 in 1986. It allowed for property – a home of any value and up to $1 million of assessed value of other property — to be transferred between parents and children without triggering reassessment, keeping the property tax bill the same.
Prop. 19 would repeal Proposition 58 and force the reassessment of inherited or transferred property within families. The only exception is if the property is used as the principal residence of the person to whom it was transferred, and even that exclusion is capped.
The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the repeal of the “intergenerational transfer protections” will result in tens of thousands of California families getting hit with higher property taxes every year. The LAO acknowledges that Prop. 19 imposes an additional tax burden in the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
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