The Revenue Committee of the 68th Legislature met in Cheyenne to consider amendments to Senate File 67, a revenue-committee-sponsored bill that would change the long-term homeowner property tax exemption by reducing the required occupancy from eight months to six and removing the bills sunset provision.

The Department of Revenue told the committee the amendment would take effect Jan. 1, 2026, and officials flagged calculation and administration issues that need clarification before the change becomes permanent. "This bill will impact next year's applicants if it passes," Brenda Henson, director of the Department of Revenue, said. Henson said the department has already implemented forms and computer-assisted mass appraisal tracking and had received roughly 18,000 applications to date.

Committee members heard two central administrative concerns. First, the department said the statute as drafted requires a 50% exemption on the fair market value of residential structure and residential land but does not specify how that percentage exemption should be calculated alongside other statutory limits, such as a 4% cap on residential structure and land that took effect in 2025. "If you have percentage exemptions for property taxation that are to be applied to the same property, there needs to be guidance in statute that says what is that method," Henson told the committee. She said Legislative Service Office staff had drafted clarifying language to specify whether exemptions apply sequentially to assessed value or by some other method.

Second, county assessors told the committee the statutory definition of "owner" used in last years law—into which the revised bill would flow—covers title held by corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies and trusts. That raises scenarios in which multiple eligible residents living in different dwellings on a single parcel owned by a single corporate owner could each seek the exemption. "If the person living in house A who would qualify based on age and 25 years of payment is eligible for the exemption ... then the second house where the brother lives ... would be 2 exemptions on the same property," Dixie Huxtable, Converse County assessor and chair of the assessors' legislative committee, told the panel. Huxtable said assessors are split on administering such cases and asked the committee for statutory direction before the exemption becomes permanent.

Henson reviewed operational details from the initial implementation. The statute enacted last year applies to homeowners 65 or older who have paid Wyoming property tax on a residential property for at least 25 years; applicants must document age and indicate the years they paid taxes. County assessors received the two-page application form and notices were sent with tax bills in September. The deadline to apply is the fourth Monday in May. Henson said the 50% exemption phrase in the bill references fair market value while the department and assessors work with assessed value after the level of assessment is applied, which is the statutory point at which many exemptions are currently calculated.

Assessors said the current county systems may not be able to apply different exemptions at the level of multiple improvements automatically and that some manual accounting would be required in complex ownership structures. They urged the committee to clarify whether the exemption is limited to one dwelling per tax parcel or may be applied to multiple qualifying dwellings on a single parcel owned by one entity.

Committee members did not record a vote during the discussion presented in the transcript. Committee staff and assessors indicated LSO had drafted amendment language (attributed in committee discussion to Josh Anderson of LSO) that could address the calculation sequence; the Department of Revenue and county assessors offered to work with legislators on precise statutory language if the committee wants the exemption to continue without a sunset.

Next steps mentioned in the meeting: the committee may consider LSO-drafted clarifying language that defines how multiple exemptions and percentage exemptions should be applied and how the statute should treat multiple qualifying dwellings under a single owner. No formal motion or vote appears in the transcript provided.