The History of Property Tax in Kansas

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Property taxation has been part of Kansas's governmental structure since before statehood. Understanding how the system developed — and how many times it's actually changed — helps explain why Kansas taxes property the way it does today, and why the Constitution plays such a central role in the debate over changing it.

A Kansas Property Tax Timeline

1859 — The Constitutional Framework Is Adopted

Kansas's Constitution (the "Wyandotte Constitution") was adopted by the constitutional convention on July 29, 1859, and ratified by Kansas voters on October 4, 1859. Article 11, titled "Finance and Taxation," established the state's basic framework for taxing property — including a requirement that taxation be applied on a "uniform and equal basis," a principle that has remained in the Constitution ever since, even as the details around it have changed repeatedly.

1861 — Statehood

Kansas was admitted to the Union on January 29, 1861, putting the 1859 constitutional framework into actual operation under a state government. Property — land in particular, in a young, largely agricultural state — was one of the few forms of wealth governments could readily identify and tax, which is a major reason property tax became the backbone of local government funding rather than some other tax.

1957 — A State Valuation Agency

Kansas established the Property Valuation Department to administer and oversee property tax assessment statewide. In 1972, when the state created its current Department of Revenue by combining several existing agencies, the Property Valuation Department became what's now the Property Valuation Division of the Kansas Department of Revenue — the same division that still issues statewide valuation guidance to county appraisers today.

Six Constitutional Amendments: 1923–2012

Article 11, Section 1 — the core provision governing how property is valued and taxed — has been amended six times since 1859, according to the Kansas Constitution's own official historical record: 1923, 1963, 1974, 1985, 1992, and 2012. Before the first of these, the Constitution required one uniform rate on all taxable property with no distinctions between types. Each amendment chipped away at that uniform system, carving out specific kinds of property to be classified and taxed differently:

• 1923 (ratified by voters in 1924) let the state classify "intangible" property — money, mortgages, notes, and other evidence of debt — and tax it separately from real estate, instead of at the same uniform rate.
• 1963 is listed in the Constitution's own history note as an amendment to this section, but a specific description of what it changed hasn't been verified against a primary source yet — it isn't described in either of the two sources otherwise used for this section. This will be added once it's confirmed rather than guessed at.
• 1974 let the state classify and tax motor vehicles separately from other property, the same way the 1923 amendment had done for intangibles.
• 1985 (ratified by voters in November 1986, and often called "the 1986 Constitutional Amendment" in legal literature) created the real-property subclass system still recognizable today — dividing real property into distinct categories (residential, agricultural, commercial, vacant lots, utility, and more), each assessed at its own percentage of value, effective for tax years 1989 through 1992. This is the amendment that began the shift toward today's system described above.
• 1992 let the state classify and tax recreational vehicles separately as well, and reset the subclass assessment percentages again, effective starting with tax year 1993.
• 2012, approved by Kansas voters on November 6, 2012, is the direct basis for the classification system used today, effective January 1, 2013 (see below).

2013 — The Current System Takes Effect

The 2012 amendment's classification rules took effect January 1, 2013, and still govern property assessment today. The Constitution's own text is explicit about this cutover date: it states these provisions "shall govern the assessment and taxation of property on and after January 1, 2013, and each year thereafter."

What the Current Classification System Looks Like

Article 11, Section 1 currently divides real property into seven subclasses, each assessed at a different percentage of appraised value:

The Constitution also classifies tangible personal property separately, and exempts certain categories of property entirely (government, religious, and charitable property, among others). See How Property Tax Works for how these numbers turn into an actual tax bill.

Property Tax Is a System, Not a Single Tax

The history above matters because it shows the current system is the product of deliberate, repeated change — not something fixed since 1859. A property tax bill today is the end result of several separate steps:

A change to any one of these steps — the assessment rate for a property class, a mill levy set by a school district or county, or the classification a property falls into — changes the final bill differently than a change to any other step. That's also why the county appraiser (who determines value and classification) and the local taxing jurisdictions (who set mill levies) are doing two entirely separate jobs, even though both show up on the same bill.

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Historical dates and amendment years are drawn from the Kansas Constitution's own official historical record (Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes), the Kansas Historical Society, and Kansas Legislative Research Department's Kansas Tax Facts, which describes what several of these amendments actually changed. See Sources for citations. One specific claim in earlier drafts of this page — that a separate classification system took effect in 1989 — could not be verified against the Constitution's own historical note and was removed rather than published unconfirmed. The 1963 amendment's substance is flagged above as unverified for the same reason, rather than guessed at.