About Our Taxes:

From public information, a large portion (I’ve heard it’s around 85% might be higher in 2012) of the residential properties in Hamilton County have hit the 1% cap. This means that “rates don’t matter” because even if the rate were to shoot to $10.00 your home’s tax bill is capped at 1%. But what if you’re a residential property that is not occupied by the owner? What if you’re a business? Well, then you fall into the 2% and 3% categories, which is a totally different ballgame.

The information below demonstrates how the Total Rates can impact the businesses in a community. I’ve compared the property tax bills of four well known businesses Westfield, Carmel, and Fishers. I won’t name the businesses by name but suffice it to say there is a fast food company, two grocery stores, and a car wash. Each of these has at least one location in each of these municipalities except the car wash and couldn’t find one in Fishers. The figures presenting are public and can be verified by anyone who wants to take the time to do so. These figures are from last year’s tax bills because the pay 2012 bills haven’t been made available.

Company G1 AV Tax bill (Spring – half year)
Westfield $6,658,500.00 $97,340.61
Carmel $10,116,300.00 $100,470.03
Fishers $4,667,000.00 $46,452.98

Company FF
Westfield $1,352,800.00 $19,776.58
Carmel $1,297,300.00 $12,884.13
Fishers $2,455,600.00 $24,441.81

Company G2
Westfield $6,301,400.00 $91,416.48
Carmel $5,949,000.00 $59,082.49
Fishers $5,219,900.00 $51,956.27

Company CW
Westfield $1,373,300.00 $20,076.27
Carmel $1,402,300.00 $13,897.15

Please pay attention to the assessed values in comparison to the tax bill. For example, for the CW the Carmel location has a higher assessed value but pays $6000 less in taxes ($12,000 for the full year). For G2 the Westfield location is valued a little higher but the tax bill for 6 months is $30,000 higher. So this illustrates that “rates do matter” if the caps haven’t been reached. And for the G1 example, the Assessed Value is about $3.5 million higher yet the tax bill is only a few thousand.
Now since others keep bringing up the Property Tax Caps, let’s take them as next issue that plays into your property taxes. These were adopted as part of the Indiana Constitution through a lengthy process which required the Legislature to approve it in two different years, as well as, put the question to the citizens in a state wide referendum. Obviously, the legislation was approved and the referendum passed so these caps basically limit your property taxes to either 1%, 2%, or 3% of the net assessed value for the property. If your property is residential and you live there, you’ll pay somewhere around 1% of your net assessed value plus anything that fall outside the limits of the caps, such as the WWS referendum that was approved a couple years ago.

The 1% cap is basically for residential properties that the owners live in. The 2% is for rentals, farms, and businesses. The 3% is for mobile homes that are not lived in by the owner and personal property. It will be typical for a mixture of these percentages plays into the calculations, as noted in the link to the county website showing how tax bill for a home with an assessed value of $1,000,000 (like this is the average home in Ham Co) is determined. In general though, you can just apply the 1% to your home's value and be relatively close to the tax bill. You also need to know if there has been a special referendum because this is in addition to the 1%.

Example of calculating property tax bill
http://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/topic/subtopic.php?topicid=350&structureid=6

Definition of percentages for caps
http://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/egov/documents/1314120702_261077.pdf

Certified Rates for all taxing districts in the county
http://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/v6/egov/documents/1331308743_93498.pdf

Comparison of rates from 2011 to 2012
http://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/v6/egov/documents/1332246444_2107.pdf

So, where does this put us? Well, basically it puts us in a place where we now know that "rates don’t matter" if the combination of the Total Rate and your Assessed Value causes you to be over 1% of the Net Assessed Value of your property. If you’re over this 1% then your tax bill is capped and cannot go up except when your property value goes up. Now, if the rates are such that you’re not over this 1% cap then rates do matter because as the rates fluctuate so will your tax bill.
In the recent past I’ve heard several councilors, past and present that support the current administration, state that, “rates don’t matter”. In my opinion, this is true only if it’s put in very specific context and with limited circumstances. It’s my opinion that we are far from the point where these councilors will be correct due to the extreme circumstances that will need to be met. So, unlike the supporters of the current administration, I’m of the opinion that property tax rates do matter. And hey, if I’m wrong, this is a public forum that allows them to correct my errors. I invite them to post their positions under their real names.

So, let’s start this discussion.

Property Rates come under many different names. Locally, there is the school, the city, the county, the library, and the township. Each is controlled by its own “taxing authority”. These taxing authorities can be elected or appointed. In our case, the only one who is appointed is the library. They are appointed the elected authorities. The rest of these are elected by us, the citizens, and more specifically, the voters.

If you were to look at a map that had overlays of these the various “taxing districts” (areas controlled by the taxing authorities) you would see that some combine with others to give you a “total property tax rate” for a given property. As an example, within the city limits all these various rates add together to arrive at a Total Rate for a property but in the area, say around 193rd and Centennial Road, the city rate doesn’t apply so their Total Rate is different, currently lower. Based on our local situation there are only two real differences between any of the areas within Washington Township, 1) whether you are within the city limits or not, and 2) whether you are in the unincorporated township or not (these two sound the same but aren’t). The schools, library, township, and county apply to every property’s Total Rate. The city is the only one that applies to some properties, those within the city limits. On the other hand, a township rate applies to every property but for some, those in the unincorporated township areas, the township rate it is higher than within the city to pay for Fire Protection.

So, as you can see, there are a few things you can take from this so far. 1) if you want to find out all the details of what makes up your Total Property Tax Rate, then you’re going to need to look into each of these taxing authority’s budgets to see why they want the money they want from you, and; 2) this isn’t an easy topic of discussion but if you break it down, the general subject isn’t hard either, and; 3) there’s plenty of blame to go around.