When Idaho lawmakers raised the homeowner's exemption from property tax from a maximum of $50,000 to a maximum of $75,000 in 2006, they also tied future changes in the exemption to the Idaho Housing Price Index, which tracks home prices in Idaho. That's meant it's gone up substantially in the last few years, hitting a maximum of $104,471 this year - but it also means it'll go down next year. The Idaho Tax Commission announced today that the maximum homeowner's exemption 2010 will drop to $101,153.

"The decrease reflects the current state of the real estate market for residential property," said Alan Dornfest, property tax policy supervisor for the Tax Commission. The homeowner's exemption exempts from taxes half the assessed value of the home and up to one acre of land for an owner-occupied home, up to the maximum value. The maximum was first set at $10,000 in 1980, then raised to $50,000 by voter initiative in 1983, where it stayed until 2006.

Dornfest noted that the decrease for 2010 isn't unexpected; according to Tax Commission figures, residential property values already have dropped across the state. "It's hard to say how much effect this really has, because if it tracks along with your home's assessed value going down, it may have no effect," Dornfest noted. "That's impossible to say (now), because it's dependent on the 2010 values." The first tax bill to be affected by the change will be the one that comes due in December of 2010, he noted. "The intent of the Legislature, I think, was to keep it level, basically, with respect to market changes, and I think this just reflects that."