Revenue staff: only about half of eligible homeowners applied for 25% exemption; draft tax-dollar estimates lower than prior year

Ken Gil, Property Tax Division director at the Wyoming Department of Revenue, presented draft county-level data to the committee and described application patterns for the recently enacted homeowner exemptions.

"you'll see that 462 million and some change was exempted in 2026," Gil told the committee and contrasted that with the figure he cited for 2025: "1.4 billion was was uh exempted in 2025." He explained that if roughly 72% of residences are owner-occupied, applying that share to the 2025 exemptions leaves a baseline of about $1 billion in owner-occupied value; the department's 2026 exemptions (about $462 million) therefore represent roughly 44–46% of eligible owner-occupied property owners receiving the 25% exemption in the year that required an application.

Gil cautioned the committee that the numbers were draft (counts were still coming in from counties) and that the department continued to process applications; he said long-term homeowner applications had grown by about 4,000 applicants in the most recent pull. Committee members asked the department to convert assessed-value exemptions to tax-dollar equivalents using average mill levies. Gil provided draft estimates during the meeting: an estimated $190 million in exempted taxes in 2025 and about $140 million in 2026, subject to revision when county rolls finalize.

Members pressed for county-by-county tax-dollar estimates and for clarity on which exemptions would stack or be mutually exclusive should the voters' initiative pass; staff reiterated those are implementation and legal questions the committee will need to address. The department said it would follow up with tax-dollar conversions and more granular county-level figures for committee use.