Can this possibly be right?

Shocked and incredulous is the only way to describe my reaction when I learned that Hoosier property taxpayers are being asked to dig 14.2 percent deeper into their pockets this year than in 2006. Can this be right?

It turns out it is. According to the Legislative Services Agency, the research arm of the General Assembly, that’s how much Indiana’s net property tax bill has increased this year.

Every farmer knows that before you fix a piece of equipment, you have to understand how it works. The less complicated the equipment, the easier it is to fix. But Indiana’s property tax system is so complicated and confusing that no one seems to know how to fix it. Meanwhile, the state’s property tax bill is spiraling upward at a double-digit rate.

Our state constitution calls for uniformity in assessment, but we assign 1,200 separate individuals the job of subjectively applying a set of evaluation criteria to come up with similar results statewide. You would think that the total amount to be paid by property taxes would be allocated to individual taxpayers according to their share of the taxing unit’s total assessed valuation. But not in Indiana.

In 2007 the state plans to use taxpayer money to buy down property taxes by $300 million in the form of a rebate check to be mailed to taxpayers. At the same time, however, the size of two of these mechanisms, the property tax replacement credit and the homestead credit, were reduced significantly in 2007.

How can our property tax bills be growing three or four times the rate of inflation? Any effort to find an answer to this seemingly straight-forward question will put you in the middle of a blame game between local and state officials.

In any case, these increases have to stop. Indiana needs to restructure the whole malfunctioning property tax mechanism and we need to do it now. Farm Bureau is not interested in joining the blame game.

We are interested in a re-tooling of the tax system that will make it fair, predicable, accountable and transparent.

Don Villwock, president

Indiana Farm Bureau