Longmont City Council Votes Unanimously to Exempt The Sales Of Pre-Owned Manufactured Homes From Sales And Use Tax

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

At their study session on April 2, Longmont City Council changed the city code to adopt an exemption from the sales and use tax for the sale of pre-owned manufactured homes. Because manufactured homes are mobile, they are not considered to be real property, and instead, are considered Tangible Personal Property (TPP), which is taxable.

As per the Longmont City Council communication, the County Clerk’s Office of Boulder County has been in the process of implementing new financial software that deals with how they take in taxes. In the process of doing this, they contacted all the cities in Boulder County and asked them how they carried out taxation on the sale of used mobile homes.

The council communication says, “When the county staff contacted Longmont sales tax staff the county indicated that they have not been collecting our tax on the sale of used mobile homes as they were somehow under the impression we exempted those sales. It is not known how they were under that impression but apparently, there must have been some miscommunication many years ago. Longmont sales tax staff responded that a used mobile home is TPP and Longmont does not specifically exempt it. In August of 2018, the county began to charge the tax.”

Affordable housing realtors in the area have voiced their concerns over the sudden implementation of the tax being another obstacle for people in need.

The Chief Financial Officer of Longmont, Jim Golden, said, “So, we have an ordinance that we can bring to you for consideration if you are interested in exempting the resale of manufactured homes.”

Council voted unanimously to change the code.