In pictures: How surging home prices nuked Montana’s property tax balance

Skyrocketing home values and ensuing property tax shifts have caused widespread anxiety across Montana in recent years, spurring lawmakers to pass a landmark second-home tax intended to lower taxes for resident homeowners and landlords who lease out long-term rental properties.

Both Montana’s existing property tax code and the relief package that made it through the legislative sausage grinder this year are bafflingly complex, perplexing many Montanans who would like to understand the mechanics behind a law that is supposed to lower — or raise — their tax bills.

This piece is an effort to bring clarity to that confusion.

MONTANA’S TAX MATH

It’s easiest to think about the property tax system in terms of a town with just a few properties, as opposed to the tens of th