Indiana Property Tax Shock: Rising Assessments Wipe Out Savings and Fuel Voter Backlash

I got my property tax assessment yesterday. While I am irate about what mine was, some of you have shared yours and it is infinitely worse than what I got. Now every person should call your assessor and demand an explanation about how they assessed your property, get that on the record, don’t just take the letter and treat it as some sort of gospel. I have done this twice over the past couple of years and it has worked in my favor. You call in a polite, respectful manner, demand an answer, they’ll work through it with you, sometimes they catch their own mistake, they’ve done that twice with me. Don’t just accept the assessment. Now after you get their explanation, then you have the option to file a formal appeal, that’s usually for most people by June 15th, you have to file a formal appeal. Now they are slow as molasses a lot of times getting to these appeals, but at least get it on the record if you’re unhappy with it, if you’re not satisfied with it you can do that, but at the very least call your assessor’s office, ask to speak with someone, ask for an appointment for them to walk through how they assessed your property, make sure there’s no mistakes. These assessments, they’re ridiculous.

Why Rising Property Assessments Are Driving Taxes Higher in Indiana

And we said last year, we told you this was going to happen, when they were in the process of bastardizing Senate Bill one, Jeff Thompson, which by the way if you’re in Brownsburg and Hendricks County state Rep Jeff Thompson, that’s his bill, vote against him, he has a primary competitor, he’s up for reelection, I don’t know anything about the woman he’s running against. I know I can find no proof she’s a card carrying member of the Communist Party, and I didn’t find her post or her picture anywhere in a post office, good enough for me. You’ve got to start punishing these people who screwed us over. Jeff Thompson, he is public enemy number one on this. This was his bill. He took that original bill and he bastardized it and he gutted it, and it ended up being a colossal giveaway to big business. That’s who the winner of Senate Bill one was, and the loser was you. And we were screaming about this at the time because there was nothing in, and look I am loathed to say anything nice about Braun, but in this case the original Braun bill did what, it reverted everyone back to their original property tax bill of 2021. That was the one thing that the Braun idea did, and then it capped the amount the assessment could go, the bill could go up. They didn’t do any of that in the final bill. And look no sympathy for Braun because he signed the bad bill, and Braun lied to everyone. Braun relayed bad information to everyone. We said at the time until we deal with assessments, which are the issue, property taxes are going to continue to go up and within two years most people will see whatever reduction they got totally wiped out.

How Senate Bill 1 Failed to Deliver Long-Term Property Tax Relief

So I’m going to use my bill as an example of this, and I know many people had it worse. So mine’s probably on the low end, but let’s explain how my bill worked. So the way the property tax bill worked was a 10% deduction on your bill, not to exceed $300. So whatever your bill is going to be, you take 10% of that off not to exceed $300. For most people your property taxes are capped at 1% unless you have a school referendum. So for example if you have a $200,000 home and you live in a central Indiana municipality you’re probably capped at the 1%, probably not lower, not higher unless you have a school referendum. 1% of $200,000 is $2,000. You take 10% off that bill, you got $200 back off your bill this year. Now we did the math for you on this, and we said at the 1% cap with the max $300 increase, a lot of people if your house is less than $300,000 you got less than $300, within 2 to 3 years that deduction or that reduction is gone, so you’re going to start paying more than you were paying 2 or 3 years ago because of the assessments rising. So if your assessment went up $30,000 that’s a $300 increase in your bill, if your assessment went up $20,000 that’s a $200 increase in your bill. My assessment went up a little bit over $12,000, my assessment last year went up almost $8,000, so my assessment has increased close to $20,000 in two years, which means I’m paying $200 more in taxes now. You pay your property taxes what they call arrears, so you will pay your assessment this year next year. So I’m getting about $240 ish deduction from the property tax bill, my assessment has gone up roughly $20,000 which means I’m paying $200 more, which means I’m down to $40 in savings on the bill I pay next year. $40. Which means the next round of assessments, exactly as I told you last year was going to happen, next year’s assessment will wipe out all the savings for me, done, I’m paying more in property taxes than I was paying a couple years ago.

School Referendums and Future Tax Increases Add to Homeowner Burden

And of course all of the increases that led up to 2025, these lawmakers did nothing to help you. You know who they helped, their big business friends. That’s who the winner was. Now on top of this, we’ve talked about it, you’re going to have schools all over central Indiana and across our state who are going to be sprinting this fall to do school referendums. Carmel is headed for its third school referendum. If you live in Carmel you’re going to have not one, not two, but three. So you’re going to have all your savings wiped out, a lot of people are going to actually pass school referendums, so on top of the savings that you got, your property taxes will go up, your property taxes will naturally go up because of assessments on top of the school referendum, because the schools aren’t giving it back. Once the assessments lock in, the assessment increases lock in, they’re just going to keep the money. And coming up in 2029 a lot of us are going to see income tax increases because there was a change in the local income tax law. This is what your government thought you deserved, this is what your Republican supermajorities in the Indiana House and the Indiana Senate thought you deserved, more tax increases. There’s no way they were this stupid not to know exactly what they were doing. It was simple math. And remember last year we asked Carrie Hamilton what percentage of the people in the General Assembly read that bill, she said maybe 10% of the people read the bill. That’s 15 people of 150 lawmakers.

Growing Frustration as Taxpayers See Savings Disappear and Costs Rise

You are getting screwed now. I look at my assessment and I’m angry, but I got off easier than a lot of people. I talked to one person yesterday who had a $60,000 increase in their assessment, I had somebody message me who had $100,000 increase in their assessment. Now I told those people you have to examine and force the assessor’s office to explain to you how this happened, because there seems to be something amiss with this. But a lot of people, $30,000 and $40,000 increases. The lawmakers always knew when they did Senate Bill one that unless you address the assessments property taxes will go up. They don’t want your taxes to go down. They don’t want you to pay less. This was all done by design, and it’s happening exactly as I told you it was going to happen last year. Now my question becomes Governor Braun has been meeting with the people every month who go to the governor’s mansion, and they post the pictures with him about how great it is to meet with him. He told them he had an ace up his sleeve this year. Where’s that at. Where’s the ace Governor Braun. Last year Braun and Micah said they were coming back for more this year. I guess they meant more of our money, because that’s what’s happening. All the savings are being wiped out. They’ve been eradicated in two years for many people, exactly as I said. Braun and Micah, Diego, Rokita, the General Assembly, they want to talk so much about me, they want to say so many things about me, because we’re right. Because I’m on your side. Everything we’ve said about this property tax bill has been correct from the word go. Everything we told you was going to happen is happening and they’re letting it happen. Braun will call a special session on redistricting. He wouldn’t do it for you. He wouldn’t do it for property taxes. That’s one of the major reasons I was against redistricting, because all redistricting did was benefit Donald Trump. I want Braun to fight for us more than he fights for Donald Trump. I want Braun to fight for people being able to stay in their homes the way he fights for politics. Guys you’re getting totally screwed, and if you vote for incumbents you are voting for the status quo. Look I’m not a fan of almost any of these challengers because I think they totally blew their ability to have a mandate when they go in there. These Senate challengers, a bunch of them are opportunists, a bunch of them don’t understand any of this stuff, they’ll just go in and be somebody else’s yes man. They should have been focused on things like this. Think about if they had been screaming about property taxes and assessments, that’s your moral high ground, that’s the property tax person. No one in this state is more associated with property tax reform than me, because we’ve been on it for years. And all of these candidates, had they been running on this instead of wasting time on redistricting, they would be in such a better position. And most importantly not just to win but to enter with a mandate. How can you possibly vote to re elect any of these people who did this to you. Any of these people who know this system is in place. The same system, tax on unrealized capital gains, that they called Kamala Harris a socialist for. They do the same thing every year here. When you get your assessment there’s a little QR code, you can scan it and they’ll show you what homes they used to assess the value of your property, other people who cashed out, other people who made money that you’re paying for. They knew this when they passed the property tax law, the same way they knew when they put the tax caps into place almost 20 years ago, they knew as long as assessments go up property taxes will continue to rise and government will get their money no matter what the cap is. You have one person, a non fiscal agent, the assessor, who sends you a letter in the mail and says your taxes went up, not by act of your county council or your county commissioners or your town or city governments or your mayors, some assessor. Now the assessor is elected, and shame on all of these assessors who go along with this, you guys know what you’re doing to people, and they just throw their hands up and say here’s the formula we used. Who cares. Is that going to make me feel better that my taxes went up again because you used the correct formula. They’ll offer meetings, they’ll walk through it, but they’re not changing the assessment. And if they really cared, if the assessors really cared about people, they would organize a mass protest. You know how many assessors were at our property tax rally when we put 1000 people in the statehouse? Zero.