The madness of Indiana politics (property taxes)

I live in Indiana, which certainly has some goofy politics and culture. In a low tax state, one in which when I moved to in 1987, my property tax bill was $186 per year. We were reassessed and our bill was reduced to just $83 per year. I wondered if the police or fire dept would even come if we called given that miniscule tax bill.

Of course, the reason for this ridiculously low tax bill was because the local assessors were not assessing property correctly. In short, businesses were getting soaked while homeowners were not paying their share.

Along comes the Indiana Supreme Court responding to a lawsuit by one or more businesses and the state was given 10 years to fix the problem. All property needed to be assessed on its market value.

After 8 years, the reassessment came and boom, folks taxes went UP. No sense among Hoosiers that they had been paying way too little tax, instead, the call went up for property tax caps. And to eliminate property taxes altogether. The latter seemed ridiculous in relflexive conservative Indiana.

Yet, the Democrats who contol the Indiana house, just threw out property tax caps indeed, they threw out property tax altogether and substituted a property tax based on ability to pay. Isn’t that called an income tax?

Not sure how that is going to work with business.

And why isn’t this seen as an increase in income tax?

Imagine the possibilities. I should put my mothers name on my house, her income is so low, I’d probably be paying just a few dollars instead of he $2600 a year based on the value of my home.

Why, why, why do we not want to tax property, just work?

So, there will be extremely rich folks who live off muni bonds nad capital gains who will have a rather low income, pay a couple of $100 on their multi-million dollar home.