Assessor’s call: Appeal the property assessment hitting your mailbox next week
The Tippecanoe County assessor is encouraging appeals this year, hoping to send a message about state-mandated factors conspiring against equitable assessments used in property taxes.
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ASSESSOR’S CALL: APPEAL THE PROPERTY ASSESSMENT HITTING YOUR MAILBOX NEXT WEEK
Two months after sounding an alarm about changes in state law that would slice as much as 60% off the assessments of large apartment properties in Greater Lafayette, the Tippecanoe County assessor said Friday that he’s lining up community meetings to show homeowners and business owners how to appeal the next round of assessments heading to mailboxes as soon as next week.
The idea, Assessor Eric Grossman said, is to encourage enough people to challenge their assessments via constitutional appeals based on inequity to focus attention on what he contends is a system that is drifting further from market value basis with too many specialized deductions baked into Indiana tax codes – “disparate enough to stretch anyone’s concept of uniformity and equality.”
Grossman said appeals based on inequity tend to be a small portion of the 550 to 750 his office fields in a typical year, which typically are dominated by questions about accuracy in the calculations of a property’s value for tax purposes.
Among Grossman’s goals of goosing that appeals number in the 2024/pay-2025 assessments: Potentially setting up challenges to spur what he’s called “St. John 2.0,” referring to an Indiana Supreme Court ruling in 1998 that cleared the way for more market based value assessments by saying the General Assembly could set rules that were “limited by the constitutional requirements of uniform and equal rate of property assessment and taxation.”
“Our office isn’t so much about the tax policy side of it, as much as we want a fair system,” Grossman said. “We’re not trying to come off as anti-subsidy or pro-taxes in any way. We’re just saying that what the Constitution provides is that you can have all sorts of subsidies and reductions and refunds or whatever, but it has to be above board. … We’re trying to send the message that the constitutional requirement for equitable assessments should not be taken lightly.”
Grossman’s latest follows flares he sent up in February for officials in Greater Lafayette school, city and county financial offices about a 2023 law that he contended stymied how his office handled assessment decisions about properties with five or more rental units, lining up what he considered a large move away from market value for the community’s high rises and large apartment complexes.
The situation got into the assessment weeds, but here was the gist:
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