The City Council Budget Committee today deferred two bills designed to provide property tax relief to O‘ahu homeowners.
Council Budget Chairman Nestor Garcia stressed that he intends to move out some kind of tax relief measure for those most in need of a break.

He cautioned, however, that both Bill 09-75 and Bill 09-09 would allow more owner-occupants to qualify for the low-income tax credit, also known as a "circuit breaker."
To qualify now, a family must make no more than $50,000 in total income. The tax credit is anything above 4 percent of total income.
For example, if a family earning $50,000 has a property tax bill of $3,000, it would get a $1,000 tax credit because its tax liability would be capped at $2,000 (4 percent of $50,000).
But if the same family owed only $1,500 in property tax, it would not get any tax credit because the maximum liability at that income level is $2,000.
If any title holder to a home is 75 or older, that household gets a more generous tax break, with its tax bill capped at 3 percent of total income.
For the 2009-2010 fiscal year, 1,939 families qualified for the tax credit, according to the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services. The program cost the city about $2.1 million in lost revenue.