WARTS AND ALL
Indiana State Senator Luke Kenley (R-Noblesville) says he’s pleased Indiana House members passed out Governor Daniels property tax reform plan, but he says there are “a lot of warts” on the bill that the Senate is going to have to clean up.
House members passed tax reform with $350 million of new spending they including a tax credit for renters and and earned income credit to offset the increase in the state sales tax. Kenley, the Senate’s point man on property taxes, said it was easy to vote for the measure without having to spell how they will be paid for and he expects the Senate to make numerous changes to the bill.
In addition, Kenley downplayed the assignment of SJR-8 (the constitutional amendment which would have eliminated property taxes) to a summer study committee. Kenley says the study committee assignment does not mean the bill the dead, but instead it gives lawmakers a chance to really see of property taxes can be eliminated in a responsible manner. He also points out that many of the reforms that are being debated right now came out his summer study committee on property taxes.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Politicians should be passing the recommendations in the bipartisan Kernan Shepard Report that showed how to reduce the cost of administrating government services than passing laws just shifting taxes around which will actually raise the amount of taxes we pay without lowering ANY spending.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Check this out. Just heard from my source. The assessment that were completed on residential (only) properties based on the “fair market value” are being inflated by the assessors at the request of high level politicians, namely the Gov. Blade himself (and do not exclude Baur and Bosma). Why? They needs to justify the caps that he is putting on residential properties. Supposedly, the inflation rate is roughly 12%-14% compared to the last assessed value. Just wait till you get your bill.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
So Kenley says we’ll “study” constitutional changes while seeing how things go. Sounds fairly close to the prediction I made in my Jan. 21st post on Indy Tax Dollars. The most likely permanent change is the increase in the sales tax.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Takes a wart to know a wart, I suppose.