Senator Kelly Seyarto (R-Murrieta) has introduced SCA 4, a Senate Constitutional Amendment to fight for taxpayers’ rights to leave homes and businesses to their children after their passing.
After Prop. 19’s narrow passage in 2020, voters discovered a lesser-known implication of the law, which capped the value of family homes that can be inherited without additional taxation at one million dollars and held a contingency that a family member must reside in the home for the remainder of their life, severely limiting property, land, and business inheritances in California.
SCA 4 would reinstate Propositions 58 and 193, which protected families and their rights to keep their childhood homes when parents or grandparents pass away and undo the damage done by Prop 19.
“We should be making it easier for Californians to inherit property without asking them to pay through the nose in additional taxes,” said Senator Seyarto. “Tax reassessments on inherited property often lead to the family being forced to sell their homes or close down their business, which is an unacceptable consequence for hard-working families who are trying to set themselves and future generations up for success. Economic mobility cannot be achieved unless we let people own what they create through decades of hard work.”
“For more than 30 years, hard-working California families had a constitutional protection that helped them climb the economic ladder. And now, it's gone,” said Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “Proposition 19 took away the right to transfer property between parents and children without a massive tax increase. We must fix this before more families are forced to sell the properties their parents worked so hard to acquire.”
If SCA 4 passes both the Senate and Assembly, it will go to the governor for signature and then put to the voters for ratification.