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The bill backed by Senate Republican leadership would divert lodging tax dollars that currently fund tourism promotion and small-town economic development to lower homeowner tax bills.
Lawmakers who want to offer Montana residents substantial immediate property tax relief face an inescapable mathematical reality: Unless they want to force local governments to lay off cops and teachers, the money to lower residential property tax bills has to come from somewhere.
That somewhere, for one of the first major tax relief proposals to get a hearing before a legislative committee this year, is the state’s current pair of bed taxes: a 4% lodging facility use tax and a 4% lodging sales tax.
Together, those taxes collect about $120 million a year, a figure that’s about twice what it wa...
