It’s no secret that Indiana’s property tax system is dysfunctional. Wildly varying valuations, delayed billing, changing deadlines and other factors contribute to make it a Byzantine situation that even politicians and those who work in the assessors offices can’t clearly explain. It’s no wonder that some home buyers who are new to the area end up caught between its wheels and pay a heavy financial price.<\/p>\n
Take this case, a family moves from Florida, a state where tax exemptions transfer automatically, to Granger. He finds a nice house for his family. At closing he hears a twenty second lecture that it is important to file exemptions and given a sheet of paper to remind him of the fact. This paper is included in his closing packet, a stack of papers that can run a few inches deep. He gets his keys, gets absorbed unpacking, getting his kids registered for school, and settling in to a new life. He forgets he should drive to the County-City building and file his exemptions.<\/p>\n
Months later, the tax bill comes. The assessed value of his house has changed since he bought it. He doesn’t have the homestead and mortgage exemptions he is eligible for, and the auditor’s office says it is unable to file them now. We’ll keep the math simple, but his tax bill ends up $2,000 higher than it was estimated, and that his mortgage company escrowed for. If he’s lucky, he can simply pay the difference and grumble about the system. More likely, he doesn’t have $2,000 handy, so his mortgage company changes his monthly payment to recoup the shortfall\u00c2\u00a0and to account for the new, higher tax amount next time. His payment has just increased a few hundred dollars\u00c2\u00a0per month for the next several years.<\/p>\n
Nobody likes taxes, but most of us realize they are necessary for services including schools and police and street repair. Given this, why not make the system as comprehensible and regular as possible. It would be a simple change to ask home buyers if they are buying an exemption-eligible property at the time of closing. They could state which exemptions they qualify for, and sign an affidavit to that effect. The title company could report this information to the auditor and everyone could skip the “file in person” step. Nobody would forget to file\u00c2\u00a0because it would be automatic.<\/p>\n
This would result in most buyers receiving the exemptions to which they are entitled. In addition,\u00c2\u00a0the taxing entities wouldn’t collect unintended taxes, and would be encouraged to regularize the tax burden so that the assessments are accurate, the rates reflect their budgets.<\/p>\n
Do you have a tax related “horror story” or a proposal to improve the system? Share it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s no secret that Indiana’s property tax system is dysfunctional. Wildly varying valuations, delayed billing, changing deadlines and other factors contribute to make it a Byzantine situation that even politicians and those who work in the assessors offices can’t clearly explain. It’s no wonder that some home buyers who are new to the area end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-tax"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realst8.com\/staging\/9756\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}