About 150,000 Oahu homeowners, including elderly and disabled ones, would lose their property tax exemptions if the City Council adopts politically dicey recommendations made by an advisory panel aiming to bring more equity, fairness and simplicity to the tax system.

Many nonprofit organizations and owners of historic homes, along with all credit unions, also would pay more under the reforms proposed by the Real Property Tax Advisory Commission.

The panel’s recommendations, approved at a Wednesday meeting, were expected to be posted on the Council’s website today, starting a 30-day period for the public to submit written comments. In early January the package will be forwarded to the Council, which will solicit more public feedback and can decide to embrace, ignore or change any of the proposals.

While Council members say they will seriously consider the recommendations, the most controversial one — eliminating the exemptions for more than 144,000 owner-occupants of homes — isn’t likely to survive, especially in a year in which five of nine Council seats are up for election, political observers say.

Council member Ann Kobayashi, who heads the budget committee that will take the lead on considering the recommendations, acknowledged that repealing homeowner exemptions probably won’t happen.

"We don’t want to make life harder for people," Kobayashi said. "We want to make life better for people."

Still, she said some reform is necessary. "We want to look at the whole system and see what needs fixing or how we can make it better."

Members of the commission, an independent panel formed by the Council, said they looked for ways to make the system fairer, more transparent and more efficient without regard to political consequences. The recommendations are intended to reform a hodgepodge of exemptions, some that haven’t been updated in decades and that have been criticized for giving tax breaks regardless of a property owner’s ability to pay.

Millionaire mansion owners, for instance, get the same breaks as owners who can barely pay the mortgage for their tiny homes.

The proposals are designed to more equitably spread the burden of funding city services — ensuring that everyone pays something — while moving away from granting tax breaks simply because a property owner is a member of a particular category, such as disabled veterans, commission members said. Homeowners who can’t afford their tax liability can apply for an existing tax credit program, commissioners say.

The credit, though, is limited to owner-occupants with less than $50,000 in income.

Elderly homeowners are among those who could be most affected by the recommendations. They not only could lose the standard homeowner deduction that reduces an owner-occupant’s tax bill by $280 a year under current rates, but the additional reduction given to those 65 and older.

"I think that would be a very difficult blow for many older people who have been counting on those exemptions for as long as they’ve had their property," said Tony Lenzer, 81, who has owned his Kailua house for about 40 years.

Many nonprofit groups and owners of historic homes would pay more under the proposed reforms because their taxes would be based on a percentage of the assessed value of their property. At present they pay as little as $300 a year, regardless of property value.

The seven-member commission adopted the recommendations at a meeting in which two audience members criticized the panel for not making available to the public the draft report containing the proposals and for not allowing oral testimony.

Such actions violated the Council resolution creating the commission, they said.

"It’s unacceptable," said Michael Golojuch Jr. "The public should have the right to speak."

But Lowell Kalapa, commission chairman, said people will have ample opportunity to comment on the recommendations through the next month and once the Council considers the proposals.

The city forgoes about $100 million in revenue each year because of the tax breaks it gives for roughly 40 exemption categories. Many have been in place long before 1978, when responsibility for property taxes switched from the state to the counties.

The exemptions provide breaks to a range of landowners, including those operating cemeteries, slaughterhouses, crop shelters and for-profit child care centers.

Homeowner exemptions account for about half the $100 million in forgone revenue.