Indiana

Assessing The Assessors

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

Current Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and former Mayor Bart Peterson are having a news conference today to promote the consolidation of the township assessor functions into the county assessor.  So in that spirit, I’m reprinting a letter  a listener to my morning radio show sent me in support of consolidation.

Consistency Trumps Accuracy in Assessing Property

Don?t let the Township Assessors confuse the issue, on the matter of consolidating assessing duties, with their claims of better accuracy.

The most important factor in fairly allocating the property tax burden is CONSISTANCY of assessments.  For example, it is better to have a single assessing official over assess every property by 100% than to have 10 assessing official with some over assessing by 10% and others under assessing by 10%.   Fair allocation of the tax burden depends ENTIRELY on assessment consistency.

Granted, if every property were over assessed by 100%…that would generate other problems?particularly a flood of appeals?but you get the point!

Finally, the other important benefit to eliminating Township Assessors is it is a step toward aggregation of taxing districts.  Frankly, I?m not sure how much can be ?saved? by reducing the number of elected officials and there offices?but I don?t really care!  What I care about is reducing the number of taxing districts!!!  Too many taxing districts carves the tax base into too many small pieces.  These small pieces often distort tax burdens?some districts with tax rates that are much too high (others too low).  Larger taxing districts provide a  more robust tax base and, generally, allow gov?t services to be funded at a more ?reasonable? tax rate for all.

There is no defensible logic behind the current taxing district structure that has property tax rates inside the IPS school district nearly 50% higher than the property tax rates outside the IPS school district.  There are many reasons for this differential?but this result is fundamentally flawed on its face.  This is why the property tax caps are not only good politics?but good policy.

I’ll be more than happy to print the township assessors’ point of view if they send me one.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).