From the Bloomington Herald Times:
A mistake in calculating Monroe County property tax bills will mean a combined revenue loss of $990,827 to Monroe County schools, the public library, the city of Bloomington, county government, townships and other taxing units.
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According to county Treasurer Cathy Smith, 257 tax-exempt entities, such as educational, religious or charity organizations, were erroneously sent bills for personal property taxes.
Tax bills for tax-exempt entities outside of Bloomington or Ellettsville town limits should reflect a newly imposed stormwater fee, but not taxes on medical or factory equipment, heavy machinery or other such personal property.
IU Health Bloomington Hospital received the biggest incorrect tax bill: for $561,428 on an assessed value of $28.95 million.
They won’t have to pay that bill. New tax bills for all 257 affected parties are being prepared.
“It’s confusing to taxpayers. We don’t want to send them more than one tax bill,” said Hans Huffman, Smith’s chief deputy.
Property taxes are calculated on the total assessed value of all property in the county, and the assessed value of tax-exempt entities shouldn’t have been included, but it was. That means that all the other property taxpayers in Monroe County got bills lower than they should have by $990,827.
That amount is not recoverable, at least, not this year.
“The only thing we can do is appeal and collect the money next year,” Gerstman said via telephone. “We’ll start the appeal process next week.”
Overall, the lost income is about one percent of the expected tax revenue for all the taxing units in the county, Smith estimated. But the percentage of income lost will vary greatly from taxing unit to taxing unit, depending on which erroneously billed nonprofits are located within their taxing district.
For this year, Bloomington city government will receive $377,930 less than the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance approved for it from property tax collections; Monroe County Community School Corp. will get $338,055 less; Monroe County government will get $178,558 less, and Monroe County Public Library $42,975 less. Others affected include the Monroe County Solid Waste Management District, Ellettsville, Stinesville, Perry-Clear Creek Firefighters and the county’s 11 townships.
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http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2012/04/19/news.auditors-office-error-990k.sto
(This is a paid article)
