We at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are grateful for your support of the Repeal the Death Tax initiative effort. For months, we have been working hard to see if it’s possible to try for a third time to collect the signatures needed to get this important measure on the ballot to reverse the provisions in Proposition 19 (2020) which have triggered reassessment of property passed from parents to children.
Prop. 19 was the biggest property tax increase in California history. But it may not hold that title for long.
The tax-raisers in Sacramento and their friends in the California courts have been attacking Proposition 13 in every way possible. We have been particularly troubled by court rulings that have carved a loophole in Proposition 13 that effectively wiped out the protection of the two-thirds vote requirement to raise local special taxes.
That’s why we have filed the new initiative called The Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Proposition 13. It will close the “Upland” loophole (named after the 2017 court case that created it), which has allowed unconstitutional tax increases to take effect if they were proposed by a citizens’ initiative instead of by a city council or other government body. The “Upland” loophole has become a weapon of special interests to raise taxes.
But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up on our effort to Repeal the Death Tax. It will take a constitutional amendment to restore the parent-child transfer exclusion from reassessment. There are two ways to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
The fastest way is for the Legislature to pass a constitutional amendment with a two-thirds vote in each house. That can put the amendment on the ballot for voter approval as early as June 2026. In fact, the parent-child transfer exclusion was created by the Legislature in the first place, in 1986, and the vote in each house was unanimous. It went on the ballot for voter approval, and 75% of voters said, “YES.” That vote is a measure of how many Californians were being crushed by having their family property reassessed to current market value after the death of a parent.
The second way to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot is with an initiative. In order to collect the more than one million signatures needed in the limited time allowed, HJTA is asking everyone who supports this effort to sign up for updates at RepealTheDeathTax.com. We have tens of thousands of people signed up to receive a petition, but we need hundreds of thousands to get it across the finish line.
So you can help to Repeal the Death Tax by calling your state representatives and asking them to support a constitutional amendment to restore the parent-child transfer exclusion, the way it was before Proposition 19 gutted it in 2020. If you’re not sure who represents you in the Assembly and state Senate, you can look up your representatives’ names and phone numbers at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.
And please tell everyone you know to sign up for updates at RepealTheDeathTax.com. Slowly, as more people have the sad experience of losing a parent and inheriting property that is reassessed, the word is getting out that this problem must be fixed. We wish it had been possible to reverse this already, but we’re not giving up.
Thank you for your support of this important effort.