Stop in for a cup of coffee
Our State has a property tax in addition to real estate tax. Which sounds bad and is certainly offensive but in the end our total tax burden is one of the lowest in the Country. Example you buy a new counter top and pay tax on it at the granite store, as soon as you install it you pay tax on it again as personal property. Just like our vehicles, pay tax when you buy it then pay personal property tax when you plate it. Again still super low price but it is an antiquated system at best. Not many states left doing it this way.
So Indiana about 15 years ago, passed a constitutional amendment, capping the amount of property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value. The local county (or city if large enough) conducts the assessment.
Well what has inevitably happened since municipalities are nearly 100 percent funded by property taxes, is local assessors started increasing assessed values, often outpacing the local market value for properties. A couple areas got caught raising values double or even triple the market value year over year. They don’t even have to tell you until the property tax bill for that new assessment goes out via mail.
Mind you, when they send out the property tax bill, they include the latest assessment, then you get 30 days to pay it. So a LOT of people got shell shocked and completely caught off guard, those with mortgages that included property taxes suddenly found their mortgage payments skyrocket, those that didn’t, found themselves scurrying to come up with thousands, in some cases 10s of thousands of dollars with only 30 days notice.
Heck, our county actually played it “right” and the value of the assessment was inline with the increase in market value, which nearly tripled. The local rate is .86 percentage of assessed value, raised from .65 percent last year. The property tax on the farm this year, 35,000 dollars, last year, 14,000.
On my 10 acres, they raised my assessed value from 23,000 to 38,000. Which shockingly is lower than the market value, which was just appraised at 90,000. So I’m prepping for that adjustment soon.
So this has created one heck of a storm at the state house with the state legislatures and governor PO’d at the locals and now working to put a cap on year over year increases a county can charge for property.
One governor candidate, surprisingly a dem, is campaigning to end property taxes in our state all together and raise the sales tax from 7 percent to 9 percent to off set it.