# Freeze It at 60: Keep the Home You Paid For _Your property tax bill should stop climbing the year you turn 60. Here is the plan, who it covers, how it gets paid for, and the rest of what I will fight for on behalf of District 32's seniors._ By Zac Martin. Published 2026-09-29. Canonical URL: https://zac4sd.com/blog/freeze-it-at-60 Platform pillar: B. Taxes, Spending, and Budget Neighbor, When you pay off a house, staying in it should get easier. In South Dakota it gets harder. Every spring the assessment goes up, the bill goes up with it, and the Social Security increase does not keep pace. For a lot of people in District 32, the house they finished paying for decades ago now costs them more every year than it did when they had a mortgage. That is backwards. So here is my plan. ## Freeze the bill at 60 When you turn 60, your property tax bill on the home you live in stops going up. It stays at the amount you paid the year you turned 60, for as long as you own the home and live in it. Why 60 and not 65? Because the years right before retirement are when people make the big decisions. Do we stay or sell? Can we afford this house on a fixed income? A freeze at 60 gives you five years to plan around a number you can count on, instead of guessing what the county will send you next spring. Here is who it covers: - **Age:** 60 or older, living in a home you own. - **Income:** under $65,000 for a single person or $80,000 for a couple. Those limits rise with inflation every year, so a cost-of-living raise never costs you your freeze. - **Home value:** the same cap the state uses today, $514,500, also indexed to inflation. This is for the homes regular families live in. ## What we have today, and why it falls short South Dakota already has a program called the Assessment Freeze for the Elderly and Disabled. It deserves credit. But it has three problems. It starts at 65, after most people have already made their retirement decisions. It freezes your home's assessed value, not your bill, so the bill can still climb when levies go up. And its income limits are $56,595 for a single person and $66,885 for a household. They do not keep pace with the cost of living, so every year some people age out of help they used to qualify for. Their income never really went up. The price of groceries did. If you are 65 or older right now, apply for the current freeze anyway. The application goes to the Pennington County Treasurer, you have to file it every year, and the deadline is April 1. Plenty of people who qualify never apply. ## How it gets paid for The first question I get is a fair one: if your bill stops rising, does somebody else's go up? It should not, and under my plan it will not. The state makes counties and school districts whole for the frozen amount, and it pays for that by capping state spending growth to population plus inflation. Pierre has been growing faster than the families it serves. The 2026 general appropriations bill passed the House 50 to 17 and the Senate 25 to 9, with almost nobody asking hard questions. The gap between that growth and a disciplined budget is the money that keeps seniors in their homes without shifting the bill onto young families or renters. What I will not do is fund it with a higher sales tax. The sales tax is already scheduled to rise in 2027 to pay for the last round of property tax relief. A senior on a fixed income pays that increase at the grocery store every week. I will vote to hold the rate where it is. ## The rest of the senior agenda The freeze is the headline. Here is the rest of what I will carry to Pierre. **Hold the sales tax.** Every tenth of a percent on the sales tax is a grocery bill. **Put your electric bill in dollars.** When a utility asks the Public Utilities Commission for a rate increase, it should have to show what that means in real dollars on an average Rapid City bill, not a percentage buried in a filing. **Keep care close to home.** Nursing homes in this state are closing because they cannot find staff. When a small-town nursing home closes, families drive an hour to visit Mom. I want reimbursement rates that cover the real cost of care, and workforce training aimed at the openings that actually exist. **Stop the people who steal from seniors.** South Dakota now protects banks that pause a suspicious transaction when they believe a senior is being exploited. That is a good start. I want stiffer penalties for anyone who drains a senior's account using a power of attorney or a position of trust. **Find your forgotten money.** Amendment K on this November's ballot puts unclaimed property, like old bank accounts, uncashed checks and life insurance that never got paid out, into a permanent trust so it is always there when the owner comes forward. I am voting yes. While you are at it, search your own name, your late spouse's name and your parents' names on the State Treasurer's unclaimed property search. You may be surprised. ## Why this is a family issue When I say Strong Families. Strong South Dakota., I mean the whole family. Grandparents who stay in the house where they raised their kids are the ones who host Sunday dinner, watch the grandkids after school, and keep a neighborhood steady. When we tax them out, the whole family loses its anchor. Absentee voting is open now at the Pennington County Auditor's office, 900 Concourse Drive, weekdays from 7 to 4. In the State House race you get two votes. I am asking for one of them. If you have a question about the freeze, call my campaign line at 605-600-3281. It rings straight to me. Strong Families. Strong South Dakota. Zac Won't freezing seniors' taxes just push the bill onto everyone else? Not under this plan. The state makes counties and schools whole for the frozen amount and pays for it by capping state spending growth to population plus inflation. Without that backfill, the levy would shift onto younger families and renters, which is exactly the outcome this plan is built to prevent. Why should a 60-year-old get a break a 40-year-old does not? Because at 60, people are making the stay-or-sell decision on a fixed or shrinking income, and a predictable bill is what lets them stay. Nobody's bill gets cut. The freeze stops the increases. And the income limits and value cap keep it aimed at ordinary households, not the wealthy. Isn't this just the program we already have? No. Today's program starts at 65, freezes only the assessed value so the bill can still rise, and uses income limits that do not keep up with inflation. This freezes the bill itself, starts five years earlier, and indexes the limits every year. What about schools? Won't they lose money? No. The backfill goes to schools and counties so their budgets are not cut. The cost comes out of Pierre's growth rate, not the classroom. --- ## Common questions on this issue **Q. Property tax cuts mean schools lose funding. Are you against education?** A. Property tax relief does not mean cutting school funding. It means finding better ways to fund schools than taxing homeowners out of their homes. SB 245 pays for relief with a sales tax increase, which is the part I want changed. SB 96 allows counties to choose sales tax over property tax. There are multiple ways to fund schools that do not punish seniors on fixed incomes or young families. **Q. The state needs that revenue to function. You can't just cut without cutting services.** A. The 2026 G-Bill cleared the House 50 to 17 and the Senate 25 to 9. That is not the foundation of essential services. That is growth for growth's sake. When I talk about spending discipline, I mean asking hard questions about every new dollar and every new position. **Q. No income tax means we rely on sales tax, which hits the poor hardest.** A. The best protection for working families is keeping the overall tax burden low. A state income tax has never reduced the sales tax anywhere it has been tried. It has simply stacked one on top of the other. South Dakota's no-income-tax status keeps more money in working families' hands. **Q. You opposed the new state apprenticeship office. Don't you care about workforce development?** A. I fully support workforce development. What I oppose is creating a new state office with seven new employees and an $830,000 annual price tag funded only for two years with no plan for year three. Workforce development can be pursued through existing agencies and private partnerships. **Q. Data center tax incentives bring jobs. Aren't you against economic development?** A. Economic development that gives tax breaks to massive corporations while raising the burden on homeowners is not economic development. It is corporate welfare. Real economic development grows the tax base broadly, not by privileging a handful of favored industries. **Q. Property tax relief sounds great, but how do you actually make it permanent?** A. Through three steps. First, structural reform that caps the growth of assessed valuations. Second, shifting some school funding off of local property tax and onto the state. Third, long-term spending discipline. No single bill fixes this. A sustained plan does. **Q. Freezing seniors' property taxes at 60 just pushes the bill onto young families and renters.** A. Not under my plan. The state makes counties and schools whole for the frozen amount and pays for it by capping state spending growth to population plus inflation. Without that backfill the levy would shift onto younger families and renters, which is exactly what the plan is built to prevent. The income limits and the home value cap keep it aimed at ordinary households, not the wealthy. --- Paid for by Zac Martin for South Dakota.