Property Tax-Facts or Fiction?

I read this article by Karen Francisco and Tracy Warner and of course I have a different take on several of the responses which are listed below.

1. Bottom Line: I'm going to owe more on my home's property-tax bill, right?

Yes, you are. The reason is that the State of Indiana will impose a circuit breaker impacting local taxes in 2008. So, Allen County and Fort Wayne homeowners will experience an increase from 47% to 65% increase in there tax bill. And had not the homestead credit not remained at $45,000 the increases would have been at least 15% higher. The original homestead credit was only $6,000.

2. Property tax bills usually come in April. Why are we finding out the amount of the bills so late this year?
The delay in your tax bill is from the assessors, treasure, and the auditor from feeding in the information into their tax calculator to determine how much they have to raise the individual taxes. And they have to raise the homeowners property value enough to capture a similar amount when the State issues new mandates to reduce the tax burden. So outraged was the State that it will introduce income tax option to local government as it begin to reduce the amount of the homestead credit for bailing out local government. The current amount of the homestead credit provided by the State is $45,000 it will go down to $40,000. Local government is incapable of telling the the true because it borders on fraud.

3. Why are taxes going up so much in some areas and not in others?


Because in 2003, the property were tripled in valued throughout Fort Wayne. Trending allowed the assessor to increase those areas in which they were not able to maintain the full amount of the 2003 increase.


4. The average increase in the newly annexed portion of Allen County's Aboite Township is 57%
Aboite folks knew they would have to pay taxes but they expected services to come with the taxes. And some homeowners will find that their tax bill has increased to almost a hundred percent.


5. Who's to blame for higher tax bills?

Fast talking crooks who has mandated the data that available to the public and that is why back in 1996, the Indiana Tax Court Judge Fishers ruled that assessors were violating the Constitution. And guess what they are still violating the Constitution. This is why the Governor has stepped in to shame local government for robbing the homeowners of their hard earned dollars. And the Department of Local Government Finance failure to hold local government accountable to the new regulation promulgated by the State of Indiana.

The man who started it all. This has been almost a 17 year battle for local folks to get it right.

Gomeztagle did much more than lend his name to the class-action suit. He was the one who pushed it along, refusing to settle for a decision that would satisfy St. John residents but ignore statewide issues. Along the way, the northwest Indiana business owners who had vowed to help with the case bowed out, afraid they would be blamed for increases in homeowner bills - the inevitable result of fixing an inequitable system.

Even though businesses were picking up an unfair share of the tax burden, they didn't want to challenge the overall system, Gomeztagle said, because they prefer to work out deals that address their own situations.

For him, there were no deals but great costs.

"I nearly ended up going broke," Gomeztagle said, "I almost lost my house. I lost my job and I was unemployed for several months. I'm good with numbers - I could have left this area and gotten another job, but if I had, all of this would have stopped."

Instead, it led him to a new vocation as a tax educator. He joined forces with Morton Marcus of Indiana University's Business Research Center to launch Operation TEN, for "Tax Education Now." Gomeztagle serves as the project's director, with offices at Indiana University Northwest in Gary.

Now 53, he still lives in the home where his tax battle began, along with his wife, a speech pathologist with the Hammond schools, and two teen-age daughters.

Marcus, who's known for the irreverent and entertaining presentations he makes to business and government groups across the state, has become a close friend and partner in tax education presentations, one of which they presented in Fort Wayne in 1998.

"What he has accomplished is one degree short of revolutionary," Marcus said of Gomeztagle. "He's demonstrated how one person can challenge an entrenched system. It's remarkable that a citizen without legal training could do something like that."

6. What can the homeowners do?

They can file an appeal, file lawsuits. Write to your legislatures, and especially the governor matter of fact send them a copy of your property tax record.