Yesterday's Indianapolis Star headlined its Behind the Doors column with this headline: The bewilderment's in the details of property tax reform plan.
The Noblesville Republican (Luke Kenley), Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy chairman and Harvard Law School graduate authored a nearly 200-page plan that is at the center of the General Assembly's efforts at property tax reform.At its core, the plan would shift costs to the state from local property tax rolls. Beyond that, any explanation requires, well, lots of words.
Today's Kokomo Perspective runs an article with the headline The taxman cometh but not for area businesses. The subhead reads: Multiple changes means burden shifted to homeowners. One of those changes being the loss of the inventory tax:
In all of this year, businesses in Howard County lowered their net assessed value by nearly $265 million. And the taxes on that assessed value shifted largely to homeowners.As for why I do not expect any real changes (other than Kenley's plan being too comprehensive, too complicated, and goring too many oxen):
So, Shepherd said, legislators should be able to predict what will happen when they tinker with the tax laws. But instead recent history seems to be a repeating pattern of attempts at reform, followed by unintended consequences.
"Instead of really addressing the issues, they're just doing kind of knee-jerk things," Lake said. "It's just haphazard changes going on. Their goal was not to raise taxes for homeowners, but that's what happened."
State Rep. Ron Herrell disagreed with this portrayal.
"Do we just let that go on and say, well,we'll keep working onways to alleviate this down the road, or do we try to do something to help, now that the problem is here?" Herrell said. "I don't call it a knee-jerk reaction, I call it trying to solve the problems that we're faced with."
Herrell also said he doesn't expect to see sweeping changes in property tax laws.
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