From the Vincennes Sun Commercial:
County property owners have just a few more days to appeal their assessed values.
Assessor Cathy Lane said the deadline to appeal the Form 11 that went out to area property owners in August is Monday.
Form 11 isn’t a property tax bill; those will be sent out later. The form is a rundown of the amount at which a property has been assessed. They are traditionally sent out ahead of property tax bills so any obvious mistakes in assessment or calculation can be remedied before a county’s tax rate is set....
Determining how much a property owner will pay can’t be gleaned from Form 11 alone, Lane said. County officials don’t often know themselves until area property owners begin receiving their bills because the tax rate is set by state officials after all the taxing entities have submitted their budgets.
But the Form 11, Lane said, is helpful to both the county and property owners. Home and commercial property owners can remedy mistakes in assessment before the actual bill arrives. Appeals and adjustments made after the bill has gone out mean less money for local governments, schools, public libraries and other taxing units.
The more quickly a mistake can be found and fixed, the better off everyone is, Lane said.
The first property tax bills were sent out in April, and Lane’s office in the weeks that followed was full of people disputing what a totally new county-wide assessment claimed their properties were worth.
But many of the problems, she said, were due to minor mistakes that were remedied rather quickly in her office.
Since the Form 11 went out, some 300 more appeals have been heard, but Lane said about 95 percent of those she was able to fix with a little tweaking here and a little tweaking there. The majority of the mistakes, she said, are due to human error, a mere mistake in data entry, if you will.
“Most everyone, after everything is explained to them and all the mistakes are fixed, walk out of here believing their assessments are fair,” she said.
Due to a change in the way the state calculates property values, Lane said several property owners saw the value of improvements go up while land values went down slightly. The overall total, however, should be about the same, she said.
Commercial land values, on the other hand, went up as did the value of farm ground.
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The assessor’s office can be reached by calling 812-885-2513.
http://suncommercial.com/articles/2012/09/25/news/local_news/doc50625c169c4d7452966137.txt
