BELLE FOURCHE - South Dakota county assessors and ag producers will see changes in farm and ranch real estate tax assessments after the 2009 Legislature adopted a new valuation system.

Agricultural property will no longer be taxed on its sale value, but on its production value in agriculture. State Department of Revenue officials have scheduled about a dozen seminars throughout the state to explain the new productivity valuation. Meetings begin this week and run through September.

The free workshops run from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and are open to the public. A separate series of meetings is scheduled for county officials.

Colleen Skinner of the revenue department said notice of the meetings came a bit later than the department would have liked. "We just hammered down the meetings yet this week."

She said, "We were scrambling like crazy to get it going."

"We want to try to get out and get information to the directors of equalization and other county officials," she said. "We need to get the information out to the people so that they will understand it."

Skinner said Thursday, "It's going to be a big change out there. We've got a few spots where we know it's going to be rough."

Rep Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, was the state House of Representatives Majority Leader who worked the major change through the legislature. He now serves as a state senator.

He said at the time that Meade and Butte Counties may be among the hardest hit by tax increases caused by flaws in the older tax code - but that they also had escaped increases in real estate price hikes affecting tax valuations on rangeland.

Rhoden had said farmers and ranchers in areas with major development and hobby ranch sales may find property taxes rise significantly.

He defended the change to "productivity value" as better for agriculture in the long run than making comparative land values the measure. That, he said, could definitely put ranchers out of business if their land value and property taxes double, tripled or more.

Homes in South Dakota towns currently are valued for tax purposes by sales of similar houses in similar neighborhoods. A house bought in 1990 for $50,000 may be valued for tax purposes in 2009 at $100,000. That is one reason for the state's "tax cap" - to slow property tax increases.

Ag property had another harness on runaway growth, the so-called 150 percent rule.

In many rural counties, for example, developers or investors buying ranches for hunting or future development seem willing to pay far more for land than a neighboring rancher - frequently much more than 150 percent of the estimated value.

The 150 percent rule meant that a high-dollar sale could not be used for estimating land values for tax purposes.

In Butte County, ag valuations froze more than a half dozen years because of the rule, according to Shannon Rittberger, Pennington County director of equalization.

Skinner said, "Bear in mind that we are under a property tax limitation."

A 40 percent increase in valuation for ag land "will not equal a 40 percent increase in taxes," she said.

A 10 percent limit per year is built into the new tax law, she said, to ease potential huge bumps in tax bills.

She said county officials and landowners likely will find the meetings informative.

"The Department of Revenue can't talk to everybody in the state of South Dakota," she said, but the meetings offer a chance to help landowners "understand their rights as property owners - and one of those rights is to know how their property is being valued."

Area seminars

Aug. 12 - Belle Fourche Community Hall

Sept. 2 - Winner, Tripp County Fairgrounds Extension building.

Sept. 3 - Pierre, Best Western Ramkota Hotel

Sept. 8 - Mobridge, Dacotah Bank

Sept. 9 - Rapid City, Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn

Sept. 25 - Kadoka High School