Property Tax Tales
As Marion County residents line up this week to pay their property tax reconciliation bills , I spoke to some area officials to get their take on the subject…
Governor Mitch Daniels
The reassessment was more fair than what homeowners were paying before. Homeowners would have been paying what businesses should have been paying. People make mistakes and he doesn’t doubt that many individual assessments need further corrections.
Reassessments are just part of the overall tax reform and as caps come in Marion County residents will see much lower property tax bills. They can expect a reduction in 2009 to 1½ percent cap and 2010 when the 1 percent cap kicks in.
Marion County Treasurer Mike Rodman
People have been in relatively good spirits paying their bills. The rebate checks have helped somewhat. Rodman says he will go back to the Legislature and ask for an option monthly installment plan for all property taxes. Rodman says paying your property tax bill monthly would be like paying your other monthly utilities. He says he and the Ballard administration will be approaching the General Assembly about implementing such a plan.
Shirley Mizen, Deputy Auditor Marion County
More than 3,000 property tax rebate checks have come back to the Marion County Auditor’s office. Mizen says some of the checks have come back because of bad addresses , the homeowner has moved and the checks can’t be forwarded or the property owner was on vacation and had their mail held so it came back to the Auditor as required by law.
Mizen says as the checks come back they will review whether it should have gone out in the first place and those that should have will be resent. In the event a check is returned another time, if it is over $10 it will be valid for two years and then go into the Attorney General’s Unclaimed Property Fund .
More than 255,000 property tax rebate checks have been sent out to residential homeowners.
I’ll have more tales for you tomorrow.
