Business owners are celebrating a bill Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Tuesday that streamlines the sales-tax reporting system in Arizona.

“Thank you for fulfilling my dream of 28 years,” Linda Stanfield, owner of Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, said at a bill-signing ceremony packed with business interests and key lawmakers.

But Stanfield will have to wait another 18 months for that dream to come true: The sales-tax-simplification bill won’t take effect until January 2015.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed her sales tax reform bill, bringing closure to an issue that has lingered since the governor’s days in the Legislature nearly two decades ago.

At a signing ceremony at the executive tower, Brewer signed HB2111. The bill streamlines several aspects of Arizona’s complicated transaction privilege tax system, eliminating the multiple audits business must submit to and the need to file TPT paperwork with multiple jurisdictions, as well as simplifying the way that service contractors such as plumbers and electricians pay sales taxes on their materials.

Saying it makes Arizona a friendlier place to do business, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a major overhaul Tuesday of how the state and cities collect sales taxes and audit businesses to ensure compliance.

The measure places some new limits on what cities can tax beyond what is already subject to the state sales tax. That should provide some assistance to firms that do business in multiple communities and now have a difficult time figuring out what products and services are subject to each city's tax.

As the owner of two houses in Scottsdale and one in Glendale, Walter Juessen probably knows more than most about real estate in Maricopa County.

Even so, he finds himself surprised by a property-tax system that seems to him at odds with common sense.

Two years ago, Juessen appealed the valuation of his Glendale house after finding that taxes on that property were proportionately higher than in Scottsdale.

In some ways, his experience reflects that of many others who challenge their property valuation in the county: He lost his appeal.

As home values crashed after the housing bust, many property owners thought one consolation would be a corresponding drop in their property taxes. Why that didn’t happen is the subject of a four-day Arizona Republic special report, “Taxation Vexation,” that will publish beginning Sunday.

To prepare you for the series, here’s some background on the property-tax system in Maricopa County.

Question: What government agency determines the home values used to calculate owners’ tax liability?

During the epic housing crash, property values fell by almost 50 percent in Maricopa County. Did property taxes fall a similar amount? Not by a long shot.

As homeowners clung to the idea that lower tax bills would be one small consolation of the bust, schools and cities and fire districts and hundreds of other government entities stared down their own financial crises in the five years from 2008 to 2012.

Arizona’s patchwork of special taxing districts took shape more than three decades ago as local governments looked for ways around property-tax limits without incurring voter wrath.

Today, that system is convoluted, inconsistently regulated and often mystifies taxpayers. Its effects can make or break homeowners, whose property-tax bills often include a one-two punch of levies for local government services and special-district items ranging from street lights to irrigation.

Arizona lawmakers have slashed $1 billion from public education dollars in recent years and gone to court to avoid mandatory increases in school funding. Now they want taxpayers to directly cover the costs of new construction, repairs, equipment and school buses.

It was heartening to see The Arizona Republic editorial board endorse the Arizona Senate’s action to support Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid proposal as “courageous.”

While it’s nice to get accolades in politics, I must admit it was not an act of courage, but simply what we were elected to do. The proposal as written will restore the law (as passed twice by Arizona voters) without decimating our state’s fiscal health. Any senator willing to look at the facts and the options would easily come to this conclusion.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is pushing ahead with a modified proposal to simplify the state’s sales tax system, one of her key goals this year.

But in a major concession to cities, the governor proposes to mostly maintain the current system for taxing construction activity.

Details of the governor’s proposal emerged today, even as the Senate is debating a budget plan that assumes the passage of legislation to overhaul the state’s sales tax system.