Montana homeowners’ property taxes were complicated before the 2025 Legislature convened in January.
Now, they’re, according to one state senator, the “most complicated” in the nation.
Yep, you read that right: More – not less – complicated. (With taxes, most people prefer “less.”)
To determine your residential property taxes, you’ll now need a compass, protractor, sextant and slide rule to connect the dots to decipher what lawmakers did. And suppose you do unlock that Da Vinci Code: Then you’ll need a lawyer and accountant to challenge your home’s rising taxable value and tax liability, a cardiologist to place a stent to prop open your coronary artery, and a priest to impose penance to absolve your state sins.
Welcome to this edition of the Homeowner Property Tax Shell Game, hosted by Gov. Greg Gianforte and most of your legislators, and led by the Pied Piper of Complicated Legislative Legerdemain, Rep. Llew Jones, the Conrad Republican who serves as de-facto director of much of the Republican and Democratic caucuses in the state House and Senate.
First, some background: In 2023, the Legislature and Gianforte raised the state portion of homeowners’ property taxes by about $219 million over two fiscal years. Then they proceeded to spend your hard-earned money.
Montanans expressed outrage, and county commissioners sued Gianforte over a state tax hike as he tried to blame elected county officials for raising state property taxes.
Democrats and Republicans waited until the very end of the 2025 Legislature to pass an even more complicated residential property tax system that requires more – not fewer – taxpayer dollars to hire new state employees to administer the program.
Yep, they cobbled together a more complicated tax system and added bureaucracy under a Republican administration.
Some lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans – have been crowing about this so-called residential property tax “relief.” Don’t believe them. It’s a way of saying, “We picked lots of cash out of your pocket in ‘23, passed complicated legislation this year that gives you some dough back, and raises taxes on select Montana homeowners.”
Right-wing Republicans and some Democrats tried to call out the hypocrisy of the last-minute legislation, which includes rebates that don’t necessarily pay you back for the built-in 2023 residential property tax hike.
The new law, meanwhile, creates a tiered tax-rate system for residential property that generally will result in urban homeowners in high-growth areas paying more property taxes in coming years. Families that own a second home, like a family cabin, will pay even more in property taxes (an estimated 68 percent more by 2026) because so-called “second homes” are exempt from “relief.”
“The new law doesn’t distinguish between family cabins owned by Montana residents and luxury real estate owned by out-of-state residents,” the Montana Free Press noted.
The 2023 property tax hike socked homeowners while big corporations, railroads and utilities got tax breaks. Now, some lawmakers are complaining that some commercial and industrial businesses will see property tax hikes under the new system. But one lawmaker noted these business entities will just pass their tax increases on to consumers. (Utilities, for instance, didn’t cut consumer rates when they got property tax breaks in 2023.)
Montana voters didn’t think the 2025 Legislature addressed this issue well: In a May 2025 poll, 64 percent of Montanans told Middle Fork Strategies that lawmakers did “not well” in addressing property taxes; 25 percent said they did “well” – a negative 39-percentage point difference.
Couple that with the biennial reappraisals that raise your home’s taxable value (national surveys rank Montana poorly in housing affordability). Consequently, the 2025 Legislature gets low marks in addressing that issue. To wit: 74 percent of Montana voters polled said legislators performed “not well” in addressing housing affordability; 14 percent said lawmakers did “well” – a negative 61-percentage point difference!
If lawmakers won’t fix the complicated property tax system, citizens can act and pass a ballot initiative like the constitutional amendment (CI-130) being proposed by a former Bozeman legislator that would cap increases in residential property assessed valuations to two percent annually.
It’s time for legislators to overhaul this complicated property tax system, bring it into the 21st century, and provide real tax relief to Montana homeowners. Leave code breaking to Da Vinci – or Morse.
Bill Lombardi lives in Seeley Lake.