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Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Indiana Law - More on Tax Postcards

Following up on the Indiana Law Blog entry from May 28 titled "Tax postcard confuses homeowners" that quoted from a story in the Johnson County Daily Journal that began: "Local property owners received a surprise notice in the mail last weekend: Taxes were 40 percent lower thanks to action taken by state lawmakers. State legislators ordered Indiana counties to send postcard messages to property owners, informing them that their taxes could have been higher." is this story today in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette headlined "Savings on tax bill may be skewed." Some quotes from the story:

When Allen County residents get their tax bills in the fall, it will likely contain a paragraph giving the Indiana General Assembly credit for reducing the average homeowners' tax bill by 49 percent.
But Rep. Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale, argued Tuesday that the number is greatly inflated because of poor methodology and plain bad math by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance. * * *

"We need to be careful to make sure when we give information of this nature - particularly because the pot is still boiling - that we are honest with (taxpayers)," Espich said. "I don't want my Wells County constituents thinking I brought home to them a 52 percent reduction because frankly they're not fools, and they're not going to believe it."

[Update 6/3/04] See also this story today in the Indianapolis Star. Some quotes:
"Many of us thought that was a silly requirement to begin with," Espich said of the Local Government Finance study. "We didn't need to be patting ourselves on the back." Nothing more would have come of it, he said, if the department's savings estimates hadn't been so far off target.

The Department of Local Government Finance's estimates have been sent to nearly 40 counties and at least 17 have mailed the notices along with this year's tax bills.

But Espich sought to have the savings estimates recomputed. "This methodology is a joke," Espich said. "It could have been done by a junior high student."

But Dan Mathis, the department's director of legislative relations, said the estimates wouldn't be changed. "We stand by our calculations and feel we did the best we could with what we had."

[Update 3/4/04] "Lawmakers still disagree over impact of tax restructuring" is the headline to this story today in the Muncie StarPress.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 2, 2004 08:03 AM
Posted to Indiana Law