BEAUFORT -- A new tax-cap plan sponsored by two Beaufort County legislators would limit increases in tax bills to 15 percent in years in which properties are reassessed.

If approved, the bill would mean a taxpayer who paid $1,000 in taxes on a property in a year before a reassessment would pay no more than $1,150 in taxes the next tax year.

Rep. Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head Island, wrote the bill as an alternative to a 20 percent cap on property reassessments that was vetoed in December amid constitutional and state-funding questions.

Tax bills are a collection of individual taxes from various governments and public service districts that are determined using the total operating cost for a group and the taxable value of property. County officials were unclear Thursday how the complicated process of limiting individual tax increases would work.

Beaufort County taxpayers closely watched the fight over the reassessment cap after some property values rose by more than 800 percent in 2004's countywide reassessment.

Chalk said the bill is expected to be heard in two weeks by a Ways and Means subcommittee, and he expects the General Assembly will act swiftly to support property tax relief.

"Everybody sees the need to protect people to keep them from getting taxed off their property," Chalk said.

Another property tax relief proposal in front of the legislature would freeze taxable values until a property is sold, but Chalk said that bill raises legal questions with reassessments required every five years.

State Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, added his name as a co-sponsor to Chalk's bill, but he said Thursday that he didn't know what formula would get tax relief approved by the assembly.

"It's another attempt to open up dialogue so we can assemble the best bill," he said.

The bill would have fewer legal challenges than the reassessment cap by registering the full market value of properties, a figure used to determine state education funding as well as local borrowing levels.

But Rep. Thayer Rivers, D-Ridgeland, said the plan does not resolve the problem of increasing tax bills for other property owners to make up for lost revenue in capping taxes on properties that appreciated greatly in value.

"There's basically nothing you can do like that that is not a tax shift," Rivers said.

Chalk said property owners who receive tax relief still will bear a larger burden than other taxpayers.

The tax-cap plan also may create problems for counties forced to formulate a 15 percent cap for each tax bill, said Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island.

"What we want is the simplest formula to lower property taxes but not cause a disaster for county governments," he said.

County Council Chairman Weston Newton said Thursday that the county probably would bring together the Legislative Delegation and county staff involved in reassessments in the next few weeks to review the process.

Richardson said he's likely to offer an alternative in the Senate that instead would lower the tax rate for properties.

Primary residential property is assessed at 4 percent and most other property is assessed at 6 percent. Richardson said he may call for the state to lower those numbers to 3 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

Officials with the state's municipal and county associations said Thursday that they had not reviewed the legislation.

Though he had not seen the details of Chalk's proposal, Beaufort Mayor Bill Rauch said giving local governments more revenue options is a better form of property tax relief.

"The only way you can really do it is to replace the revenue stream from property taxes with something else," he said.