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Council resolved to fight personal property tax bill

Monday, February 14, 2022
By ERIC BERNSEE, Editor Emeritus

After passing a resolution concerned about pending state legislation that contemplates elimination of portions of the business personal property tax, Greencastle city officials still have “grave concerns” about the issue.

Councilman Dave Murray, calling the debate over House Bill 1002 “a big issue,” asked Mayor Bill Dory about the status of the legislation at the February City Council session.

The mayor responded that Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb -- who during his recent State of the State address voiced support for House Bill 1002 that would change the business personal property tax as a priority in the 2022 Indiana legislature -- was put on the spot at a recent AIM dinner.

“AIM (Accelerate Indiana Municipalities -- the new version of the old Indiana Association of Cities and Towns group) had its legislative meeting and dinner on Tuesday (Feb. 8),” Dory said, “and the governor was on stage and got a little bit of harassment from Clint Lamb, who’s the new AIM president and mayor of Sullivan.

“Polite and comical,” Dory characterized the encounter, adding, “but there’s a lot of people letting the governor know there needs to be a replacement mechanism for that. So hopefully that will come forward with HB 1002, which has passed out of the House and is now in the Senate.”

City officials and anyone else were urged to attend the Legislative Update program at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Farm Bureau office to implore legislators to reconsider the legislation.

AIM has built a coalition of schools, libraries, city and county governments, police and firefighter pension unions and other groups potentially impacted by the bill which takes away local revenue “without a permanent, full replacement guaranteed by the state.”

House Bill 1002 provides that the minimum valuation limitation applicable to the total amount of a taxpayer’s assessable depreciable personal property in a taxing district is 30 percent of the adjusted cost of the depreciable personal property purchased before Jan. 2, 2022. It provides an exemption from the 30 percent minimum valuation limitation for new depreciable personal property purchased after Jan. 1, 2022.

With Mayor Dory calling Greencastle Resolution 2022-3 “a fairness resolution, not an anti-business resolution,” the City Council last month became one of the first -- if not the first -- local units of government to oppose a proposed change in the state’s business personal property tax.

The city resolution opposes all legislation that contemplates eliminating any portion of business personal property assessed value that would result in a loss of local tax revenue.

“The governor sees it as if we’re more competitive (attracting new business), we’ll grow out of this,” Mayor Dory said. “But I’m not sure that’s true. We’ll see.”

With Cub Scouts from Troop 99 in the City Hall audience, the mayor took the opportunity to turn the issue into a civics lesson for the Scouts.

“It means less revenue for the schools, less revenue for the county, less revenue for us and it makes our budget a little less workable,” Dory stressed.

Last month the mayor noted how personal property tax is relied upon for funding local government.

In Putnam County, the $342,240,211 in business personal property assessed value made up 23.2 percent of the total taxable net assessed value of the county for 2020 payable 2021 taxes.

For Greencastle Community Schools, the $187,138,198 in business personal property assessed value made up 40.2 percent of total taxable net assessed value of the school district for 2020 pay 2021 taxes.

In the City of Greencastle, the $122,616,558 in business personal property assessed value made up 47.3 percent of the total assessed value of the city for 2020 pay 2021 taxes.

Should the measure pass the legislature, the City of Greencastle, the resolution notes, “it has the potential to see a significant decrease in business personal property tax assessed value, a decrease in associated revenue and an adverse impact of property tax caps.”

No information was available on any State Senate hearing dates on the matter.

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  • Dems and rinos love to spend other peoples money.

    You think you own your own property?

    Try not paying property taxes on your property that you are paying for.

    Time for a realignment.

    -- Posted by direstraits on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 11:01 AM

  • I don't support defunding the police. Apparently the right wing state legislators do. Along with defunding the fire department, libraries, schools, and more. Just stupid.

    -- Posted by Koios on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 1:53 PM

  • yeah right, you don't own anything to tax

    I remember you and your little prog cluster

    Unarmed 110lb Ashley Babbit got the justice she deserved, right?

    Bigger Gov is your idol.

    Go away, you know nothing and you own nothing.

    -- Posted by direstraits on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 5:04 PM

  • Ms. Babbitt broke the law and unfortunately lost her life doing so. I’m not sure what that has to do with Indiana taxes, though. I also pay taxes on the things I do own, so we can have the above services I mentioned. It’s not rocket science here.

    -- Posted by Koios on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 6:27 PM
  • *

    I am pretty sure that the Mayor and the Council pass out tax abatements like candy to those they favor so its funny that they have a problem with eliminating personal property taxes across the board. Fair indeed, Mr Mayor. (eye roll)

    The personal property tax on business personal property is simply archaic and wrong. It should be eliminated and those funds replaced.

    With what? For starters, start assessing real property taxes on non-profits like churches and universities. They hold land and should pay taxes on that land the same as anyone else holding real property. In Putnam County that would go a long way to replacing what is claimed to be lost by way of elimination of the personal property tax on business.

    Need more revenue? Force corporations to pay personal income tax, which they currently do not do from my understanding. It is getting into the weeds a bit from a legal standpoint - and I will not go into great detail - but the whole point of a corporation is that legally it is a "person" in the sense that it is a separate entity. Therefore, why not tax it as such? (Do your own homework.)

    And if you were thinking that this is some new thing... this has been an issue in Indiana since the '60s. In fact here is an interesting paper I found from 2014 (7+ years ago!!) that discusses this very issue.

    https://cdext.purdue.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/REPORT_The-Personal-Property...

    I will leave it to you to decide on the merits of the paper.

    -- Posted by dreadpirateroberts on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 9:39 PM

  • Bottom line is society needs to pay for essential services. How that gets paid can be a real debate. It shouldn’t be a debate whether they are paid or not.

    -- Posted by Koios on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 10:28 PM

  • For whomever- your perspective, how should they be paid? Do you believe effiency of utilizing dollars should be part of process? What services would be non essential?

    -- Posted by beg on Tue, Feb 15, 2022, at 11:25 PM

  • Less money for schools? Um, sure, that's a popular battle cry sure to work up the masses.

    Except no one ever bothers to ask, but aren't there less students? How many kids are we educating these days?

    -- Posted by letspulltogether on Wed, Feb 16, 2022, at 7:31 AM

  • Our kids currently receive the world’s most expensive inferior education. The US is the worst by far if we judge the results based on dollars spent. Even so, I do not suggest we defund schools.

    What I do suggest is that we completely revamp the entire process of taxation and spending. Eliminate *everything*, and then require all spending at all government levels to be passed again as new spending. Every dollar has to be reconsidered and justified to the people.

    Now do that again every (x) years. Let’s say 10 years, but I’m open to other suggestions. Now those tax abatements have to expire and be justified all over again, and the council has to explain to people why they will fight to keep taxing Joe Smith’s farm, but lets Dixie Chopper operate tax free until they sell out to someone else and pull the rug out from under their workers. Now the Washington senators have to justify all over again every trillion dollar arms contract.

    We’re all concerned about the recent inflation in consumer prices, but there is no end or limit to government inflation. Every year, they take more of our money at every level, and the spending never, ever goes down. No program, no matter how outdated or useless, is ever reassessed or cut. Once spending is approved, it’s approved in perpetuity, and that’s ridiculous.

    -- Posted by techphcy on Wed, Feb 16, 2022, at 8:14 AM

  • 75% of local property tax goes to government school building and maintenance.

    Whenever the bonds that they floated to create funding for these purposes get paid off. They immediately float another bond to fund another building or update existing because they don't want to lower the property tax rate.

    e.g. They need a green rug to cover the football field.

    Soon all the government schools will need this additional rug.

    -- Posted by direstraits on Wed, Feb 16, 2022, at 8:46 AM

  • I have often wondered what the mindset of people would be after writing checks for ALL their taxes for 1 year.

    This is a side trail comment, not a direct perspective of the issues covered in the article.

    You get your paycheck with the gross pay and then write the checks for the taxes taken out.

    You get to write a check after each purchase (check for fuel taxes, car rentals, hotels, airlines would be fun to watch).

    You keep a total and at the end of the year, you see what percent of your gross pay actually goes to taxes, surcharges, etc!!!

    This might be a great way to create bipartisanship!!

    -- Posted by beg on Sat, Feb 19, 2022, at 8:39 AM

  • Beg

    You are describing a flat tax.

    This is a business owner's schedule of paying taxes now.

    property tax paid semiannually in May and Nov (regardless of the profit or loss)

    income tax fed and state annually March 1 (or quarterly if income flow is such)

    sales tax is pass through back to the state and collected monthly

    none of these are very simple and static as they are played politically, elections have consequences

    All have consequences if not paid

    -- Posted by direstraits on Mon, Feb 21, 2022, at 7:39 AM
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