Long Term Efforts Farm Property Tax

Today, every Wisconsin farmer understands and benefits of “use value assessment.”  But, this property tax relief was achieved only after decades of “long term investment” in our advocacy program.  In 1974, the WCA joined with other agriculture groups in helping to pass an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution that changed the Wisconsin Constitution’s “uniformity” clause to allow agricultural land to be taxed differently than other real estate in Wisconsin. But, that was not, in and of itself, enough to secure farm property tax relief.  The WCA and other agriculture groups worked with the Wisconsin legislature over the next 20 years to pass statutes to enact use value assessment in 1995.  Now, after more 20 years with this law in place, use value has saved Wisconsin farmers more than $2 billion dollars in property taxes in over the 20 year period and about $150 million last year alone. Every single Wisconsin farmer benefits today and will benefit tomorrow from that decades long campaign to get – and to preserve, fair property taxes for farmers.