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The scenery tax

by JIM ELLIOTT
| December 25, 2024 12:00 AM

Remember the “scenery tax”? We used to joke that it was the tax we paid in the form of low incomes for living in a place as remote and beautiful as Montana. Well, now we are paying higher property tax because our scenery has become a marketable commodity for the people who have been buying up our state. Scenery is a real factor in the increase in home values and property taxes. But how do you value something like location? The market is a pretty good way to do that. Buyers value scenery and are willing to bid up the price of a parcel of land to get some of it.

Scenery is an intangible concept that actually has a property value that attaches to the adjacent land. It is the combination of the tangible parcel of land and the view it commands that is valued together for tax purposes.

Now, Montana has a law that exempts intangibles from taxation, but it sure doesn’t exempt scenery. Let’s look back 128 years ago to when the taxation of intangibles was OK.

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