Comments on Advance Indiana™: Is A Special Session Around The Corner?

Great site! Also check out The Polis at www.polisp...

2007-06-11T14:20:00.000-05:00

Great site! Also check out The Polis at www.polispolitics.com they have some interesting stoff on Indiana pols.

The legislature's choice to cap the PTRC has had a...

2007-06-11T09:33:00.000-05:00

The legislature's choice to cap the PTRC has had a major impact on tax rates in local communities. That idea was ushered in during the '05 session.

The legislature has also failed to index any of the credits given (e.g. over 65, Homstead, disabled veteran, etc.) and therefore you are going to see senior citizens heavily hit by these increases. It'll make for a good buyer's market in older, more established neigbhorhoods as those on fixed incomes will have to get out of their homes, ASAP, when these bills come.

Good job legislature.

Much can be written about property taxes and their...

2007-06-11T08:36:00.000-05:00

Much can be written about property taxes and their increases. But here are some facts:

1. It is NOT the legislature's job to lower our property taxes. Never was.

2. It IS the legislature's job to put into place a system for local units of government to levy taxes for their services.

3. The legislature got involved in this nonsense in 1973 under the Bowen tax plan. It was pushed by farmers then, who were irate at their tax increases. It doubled the state sales tax, from 2cents to 4, and put most of the increase into the (then-new) Property Tax Replacement Fund. But as with any governmental unit, they didn't return all of the new sales tax to local units of government. The agency responsible for oversight of that funds transfer started in 1973 with about 15 employees. Today? Over 400.

4. For far too long, commercial property owners, in most (but not ALL) cases, paid too much of the burden. A slight shift of the overall burden to residential taxpayers, mandated in part by Tax Court Judge Fisher's 1999 ruling, was not mediated until 2005 by the legislature.

5. Trending, or the move to real property values based on comps, was the final part of Judge Fisher's ruling, and it's being implemented now.

It did not take a genius to conclude, that the perfect storm of trending, reassessment and a small shift in the ratio of commercial vs. homeowners, would amount to an overall mess.

The answers?

1. Make the legislature stay out of it. Their constant meddling around the edges, to appease voters, has, for 30 years, compounded the problem.

2. Make local units of government the culprit, which they are.

What will likely happen?

Indiana voters and their legislators will go around the barn to get there, and adopt some really restrictive cost controls on local units of government.

That helps by a small amount. But that, again, is not their job.

We need to insist that local units of government, predominantly schools, live within their means, or live with the results.

And whoever thought up this rebate check idea needs to be publicly flogged. The thought process behind that is frighteningly deceptive and condescending to Hoosier voters.

Last week I was querying some friends in the C-C B...

2007-06-11T08:32:00.000-05:00

Last week I was querying some friends in the C-C Bldg about the impact of the projected property tax increases. Apparently the new assessments will be mailed out first and then the actual tax bills. Assessments are often hard to understand -- I suspect most homeowners will sort of ignore those notices. When the taxbills arrive: the tsunami will hit bigtime.

An old-timer expert says he expects the removal of the inventory tax to likely hit the doughnut townships more than Center. Those townships picked up a lot of the big-box stores with huge inventories - none of those inventories will be taxed now and the homeowners will have pick up the slack.
The businesses that paid the most inventory tax are new-car dealerships -- those are exclusively in the doughnut.