ADVOCACY 2025

January 30, 2025

During the busy tax season, KSCPA is hard at work protecting the profession through advocacy efforts. KSCPA works to protect the profession through legislative influence, positioning our CPA community as a solid sounding board and trusted informational resource for advocacy success. KSCPA adheres to five guiding principles in advocacy efforts:

Protect both the CPA designation and the accounting profession.
Uphold the highest ethical standards of the profession.
Serve as an informational resource to legislators and committees on the potential impact of proposed legislation.
Provide relevant, salient information to members.
Maintain transparency for both decision-makers and the profession.

Leading our advocacy efforts are KSCPA’s government affairs representatives – Marlee Carpenter and Natalie Bright of Bright & Carpenter Consulting, LLC. Marlee and Natalie are on the ground at the statehouse, tracking bills and serving as connectors between legislators and the KSCPA. KSCPA members receive a weekly email recapping the top legislative issues for the week via video and write-up.

As we wrap up the first few weeks of the legislative session, we asked the Senate Assessment and Tax Committee Chair, Senator Caryn Tyson, to share the top issues the committee is focusing on this session:

Property Tax - Property tax issues are a big focus this session. The following bills were debated on the Senate floor, passing the Senate and awaiting action in the House: Senate Bill (SB) 10 exempting ATVs, electric wheelchairs, golf carts, watercraft and other items from property taxes; and SB 35 repealing the 1.5 mill the state collects in property taxes.

Property Taxable Value Limit - Senate Concurrent Resolution (SCR) 1603, is a Constitutional Amendment that would limit increases of your taxable value each year to 3% or less. It doesn’t limit the appraised value, but creates another variable, “taxable value”, that would be used to calculate your property taxes. Defined triggers such as selling, remodeling, or adding on to the property would trigger the taxable value to be reset. These are all current triggers for valuation adjustments. A Constitutional Amendment is a heavy lift because it must pass both chambers by a 2/3 majority and then by a majority of voters. Currently, the appraised value, also referred to as fair market value or valuation, is used to calculate your property tax bill with no assessment limit. Over half the states have some type of assessment limit, and Kansas would be the 27th state to implement such a limit if SCR 1603 were to become law. There is opposition to the SCR. Some say it shifts the property tax burden to different subclasses. However, if you look back, there are years in which the limit would help each subclass. Others say it moves the system away from fair market value. How fair is it when your neighbor sells or remodels his property, and you must pay higher property taxes as a result?

Budget - Budget work has begun. This year, the legislature established a new process. Instead of using the Governor’s proposed budget as a baseline, last year’s budget with all the one-time spending and other reductions will be the baseline. Let’s hope it helps reign in runaway spending. According to Legislative Research, State General Fund (SGF) spending increased 7.3% in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 and 18.1% in FY 2025. The state FY is from July 1 to June 30 the following year, so FY 2024 is from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.

Senator Caryn Tyson

Chair, Assessment and Taxation Committee

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