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SD governor predicts solution for rising homeowner property taxes • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-02
PIERRE — Lawmakers will find a way this winter to “tamp down the increase” in property taxes for South Dakota homeowners, Gov. Larry Rhoden predicted Thursday at the Capitol.
Rhoden said during a press conference that he formed a property tax working group with legislators and began meeting with them Monday. Lawmakers are in Pierre for their annual legislative session.
“I’m pretty confident based on our first meeting — that went very well — that we’ll be able to find a solution this session,” Rhoden said.
He did not divulge a specific plan but said it will focus on homeowners who’ve faced the biggest tax increases.
“For the last several years, the overall property tax burden has already shifted” to homeowners, Rhoden said.
Numbers from the state Department of Revenue prove the point.
South Dakota’s method for assessing the value of agricultural land changed from market-based to productivity-based during an implementation period that concluded in 2019. That year, agricultural property owners paid 27% of all property taxes while homeowners paid 39%.
Since then, the burden has shifted to 20% for agriculture and 44% for homeowners. The share paid by commercial property owners has risen from 29% to 31%. The remaining share comes from utilities and special assessments.
Rhoden said there are complicating factors, such as the continual addition of more homes and businesses while the number of farms and the amount of agricultural land decline. He said that’s one reason for the shrinking burden of ag-land owners.
But he acknowledged that the housing market of the past several years has driven prices and valuations up sharply for some homeowners, leading to successive years of extreme tax increases.
“And so rather than take a shotgun approach with some of the proposals that would affect us statewide, given the situation we’re in, I feel very confident that we need to take a rifle shot,” Rhoden said.
The governor gave no indication if he’d endorse a plan previously proposed by his new lieutenant governor, Tony Venhuizen, when Venhuizen was a legislator. That plan called for an increase in the state sales tax rate to provide property tax relief for homeowners.
Video footage of Gov. Larry Rhoden’s full press conference on Feb. 6, 2025, at the Capitol in Pierre. (Courtesy of SDPB)
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