CORRECTION (Jan. 6, 2026): This story was updated to clarify Amparan’s annual property tax bills in 2021 and 2023. A previous version of the story listed the annual bill amounts as the monthly bill amounts.

When Suzy Amparan and her three children moved into their south Kansas City home in 2021, her annual property tax bill was almost $800.

In 2023, that rose to nearly $2,900.

Staff at the Jackson County Assessor’s Office told her to file an appeal. When she asked what she was supposed to do while the appeal was being processed, she said they told her: “‘I’m sorry, ma’am. You’re just going to have to file an appeal and follow the next steps.’”

As she waited, she began to fall behind on mortgage payments. 

She was “so stressed out. I remember, I would have panic attacks in the middle of the night. At 2 a.m., waking up with a shock of adrenaline running through my body, like, ‘What am I going to do with three teenagers?’” she said. 

‘The No. 1 issue’

Amparan isn’t the only one dealing with rapidly rising home assessments.

Rep. Kemp Strickler, a Democrat from Lee’s Summit, said that “when I was knocking doors a year ago, it was by far the No. 1 issue that my constituents had, and it didn’t matter what part of my district they lived in — it was the issue.”

During the 2023 assessment cycle, assessment values spiked an average of 30% in Jackson County, prompting a flood of appeals, a class-action lawsuit and, later, the recall of County Executive Frank White Jr. 

A property’s assessed value can’t be raised by more than 15% without a physical inspection, which is why the Missouri State Tax Commission ordered the county to roll back property assessment increases that were greater than 15%, including roughly three out of every four properties across the county. In April 2025, a judge upheld that order.

But the significant rise in property assessment values isn’t limited to Jackson County. In counties across the state, assessors have been under growing pressure from the State Tax Commission to raise their assessment values to meet a state requirement that assessments fall within 90% to 110% of market value. 

In Jackson County and elsewhere, a period of underassessment followed by rapid reassessment to comply with state requirements overwhelmed homeowners, Strickler said. 

“The housing market has been very robust in Kansas City, so there was a huge increase. Historically, houses were underassessed under previous assessors, and when the State Tax Commission said they needed to be raised … it happened all in one year,” he said. 

“For a lot of people that had been underassessed, it became a huge increase in their taxes all at once, and that’s something you can’t really prepare for because you haven’t made any changes to your house,” he added. “It’s the same as it was the year before and all of a sudden it’s being valued at a dramatically higher (amount) than it was.”

Three months after Amparan’s property tax bill went up, she received a notice of foreclosure from her mortgage company.

“I call them and I’m like, ‘I’m still waiting for the (appeal).’ (They said,) ‘We’re sorry, ma’am. That’s not in our hands,’” she said.

Amparan decided to get a loan to pay her outstanding mortgage bills, momentarily lifting the threat of foreclosure.

When she went to her first appeal meeting, she said she was told “I should be happy that it was assessed at a higher value … that if I sold the house, it was valued at more. … But I’m living in the house. I’m a mother of three kids. I’m not here to sell. I’m here to just live.”

She said that a year and a half after she filed her appeal, she attended a virtual hearing with officials from the assessor’s office.

During the hearing, she asked what her home’s reassessed value was based on. She said they referenced photos from when her house was put on the market before she bought it in 2021, including photos showing new cabinets and tile floors.

“I’m like, ‘These are the most flimsy kitchen cabinets ever. They’ve already fallen apart. I have no tile in my house.’ (They said,) ‘Well, there’s tile in the bathroom.’ I’m like, ‘It’s basically plastic. It’s the illusion of tile, but it’s not tile. Everything’s plastic — compressed plastic,’” she said.

She said only one of the three officials advocated for her during the meeting. 

When the other two officials asked him why he wanted to lower her assessment, Amparan said he replied: “‘Because I know what lipstick on a pig is … A lot of people bought these homes and did quick, superficial upgrades and elevated the prices. This is what’s been going on in these neighborhoods, and now people are suffering.’”

The other officials didn’t lower the assessment to the level the third one wanted, but they did agree to lower it by about 13%. Amparan still lives in the house today.

State action

During the first special session of 2025, during which Missouri lawmakers focused mainly on post-disaster relief, construction projects and stadium funding, some legislators’ attention turned to property tax relief.

Grain Valley Republican Sen. Joe Nicola added a provision to the stadium funding bill that required 22 counties, including Jackson County, to put before voters a ballot question asking whether the county should grant property tax credits to eligible homeowners. 

That addition — including how it was worded and how it was passed — divided both the Democratic and Republican caucuses within the legislature, but a feeling that something needed to be done on property taxes persisted, according to Rep. Tim Taylor, a Republican from Bunceton. 

He voiced concerns about the bill to the Missouri House speaker, “and he told me he was going to make a special interim committee over the summer to look at property taxes and asked if I’d like to be on it. I told him yes,” said Taylor, who was named chairman of the committee. 

During the period between legislative sessions, the new interim committee toured the state to hear from homeowners, business owners and local officials about their experience with the property tax system. 

The hearings were “really well-attended, and we got … a huge amount of information, and it really started painting a picture,” Taylor said, adding that the committee heard more than 20 hours of testimony. 

During that time, he said several themes emerged, including long wait times for assessment appeals.

Another issue that came up repeatedly was that constitutional protections were not being implemented.

In 1980, the Hancock Amendment changed the state constitution to limit growth in tax revenue. Under the amendment, when property value assessments rise, the tax rate must be decreased to prevent agencies from receiving a windfall of revenue.

Specifically, taxing entities can’t increase their total tax revenue by more than the inflation rate — with a cap of 5% — even if property values skyrocket. 

“Overwhelmingly, we heard that the Hancock Amendment and the safeguards that it’s supposed to provide aren’t happening. We heard that in every meeting, and we heard it often,” Taylor said. 

But those rollbacks apply to tax districts’ average values, not individual properties’ reassessed values. That means if some homes experience greater increases in their assessments than others in the same district, those homeowners could still see a sharper increase on their property tax bill.

Taylor said the committee and other stakeholders agree that once the new legislative session begins in January, the amendment and how it’s applied will need to be reevaluated.

One part of that, he said, is separating different types of property so each can be looked at individually. 

Under the current system, the assessed value of every kind of property — residential, agricultural, commercial — is lumped together before the Hancock Amendment’s rate increase caps kick in. 

That means that if one category, such as residential property, sees a large spike while another category, such as agricultural property, stays the same or decreases in assessed value, the impact of the spike might be diluted enough that the Hancock Amendment doesn’t roll back the tax rate enough to make up for it.

Another possible solution lawmakers will consider is whether assessments should be based on the cost to rebuild a house, which Taylor said might be “a little more firm” than traditional assessments.

Democrats agree different property classes should be split up, according to Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat who serves as the ranking member on the Special Interim Committee on Property Tax Reform. 

But in a letter on behalf of the Democratic members of the committee, Steinhoff told Taylor that “we have yet to be convinced it is necessary, or even helpful, to abandon the current constitutional framework.”

Steinhoff and other Democrats instead suggested providing additional resources to assessors, lowering barriers for taxpayers to appeal their assessments and encouraging counties to offer installment plans for property taxes.

Finding the balance

While the committee heard from many concerned property owners, Steinhoff said the more extreme cases “only apply to a limited number of people.”

“But those stories were so extreme for those people that it definitely compels you to want to help them out and figure out how to make the process better so that doesn’t happen, but at the same time protect the revenues for essential services in our communities,” she said.

Taylor said many representatives from county governments, schools, libraries and other taxing entities testified to the committee.

“An overwhelming story (was) the rural counties and (the fact that) their entire being is reliant on property taxes,” he said. 

“I don’t want any taxing entity to lose money,” he added. “That’s not a goal of mine. It is a goal of mine, though, and the goal of most others, I think, to find some stability … to find where there is a sustainable amount of increase that’s not hurting the taxpayer to the degree of the stories we’ve heard.”

Looking to the new year

As lawmakers prepare to return to Jefferson City in January, Taylor said there’s momentum on both sides of the aisle to change the property tax system. 

House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, has publicly called it a priority, according to Taylor.

“Without question, there will be something,” Taylor said.

But as legislators explore potential solutions, they will also have to consider how their colleagues are changing other tax systems, including the mechanism for funding public schools and the governor’s stated goal of eliminating the state’s income tax. 

“So all of those things, and then property tax, right? They’re all tied together,” Taylor said. “One affects the other, one is dependent on the other.”