Screwing the taxpayer? Priceless

I wonder how much the LOIT will go up in Carmel to pay for their wonderful iniatitives downtown? They have a high assessed value but you know their portion of the cap will hit them hard. Open up your pay check and get ready to pay…

Well, Josh, there is reason to believe that Carmel will not be as hard hit as one might think, at least not from the residential portion. Case in point: I just moved from an apartment in Carmel into a house in Westfield. Carmel was a bit more desirable not only due to location, but because their property taxes were significantly less than Westfield’s (by about a 3-2 margin), at least in the price range I was considering ($150-200K). Most of the homes I looked at in Carmel were right around the 1% mark already. However, in Westfield, my $165,000 home is currently good for a touch over $200/mo. in property taxes. For full disclosure, with the new plan (once it finally takes effect), I’ll save about $70/mo.

It’s my thought that Carmel’s established business tax base is one of the prime differences between the two communities, and that is why property taxes were more reasonable there. Once again, this may only apply to the price range I was pursuing, and I don’t know anything about how the new caps affect the business tax base, so you could very well be right in that regard. I guess we’ll see. One thing I do know is that the Mayor will certainly have to have funds to overpay the sculptors for all those oh-so-lovely statues. I mean, if that isn’t worth going into debt for, what is???

Abdul your research justifies the inclusion of services in the sales tax scheme and reduction of the sales tax to 3% state wide. This way everybody pays an equatible amount to the financing of government.

Mauri,

I agree. In my “perfect” tax world, there would a 3% transaction tax on all goods and services and that’s how we would pay for government. Everybody would pay because everyone would use the services. That’s fairness.