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Committee advances bill to reduce annual charity-exemption paperwork, with edits
Summary
House Bill 1756 would allow most charitable organizations to file exemption applications once every five years while retaining annual field reviews where necessary; assessors supported the change as reducing paperwork and avoiding retroactive taxable events.
Representative David Walker introduced House Bill 1756 to make applications for charitable property exemptions less burdensome by permitting applicants to file once every five years while allowing assessors to request additional information or annual reviews when needed.
Walker said the bill responds to a 2023–24 problem in which many charitable organizations missed annual filings and temporarily lost tax-exempt status, causing hardship and prompting retroactive abatements. ‘‘This bill...permanently fixes the law so that situation does not happen again,’’ he said.
Jimmy Misho, chief assessor for Hudson, testified in favor and said the bill reduces administrative burden because long-standing institutions (for example, churches more than 200 years old) would not have to file every year while assessors retain the ability to conduct drive‑by or on-site reviews and require additional documentation for properties with mixed uses.
Committee members asked drafting clarifications (for example, changing an 'and' to an 'or' in line 21 to clarify which local official conducts field reviews). The committee adopted those clarifying edits and voted the committee amendment; members then voted that the bill 'ought to pass' as amended.
The change is intended to preserve guardrails where properties have complex or partially taxable uses while reducing the paperwork that can lead to inadvertent loss of exemption status.
