...Monroe County alone, about 3,000 property owners who have claimed the credit still haven’t come forward with their verifications.
Of course, some can’t because the home they’re claiming is not their principal residence.
In Monroe County, with its sprinkle of summer homes around lakes Monroe and Lemon, and with a few tucked away in the woods, it’s a good bet some seasonal retreats have been claimed as principal residence by people who may live in Indianapolis, Carmel or Greenwood.
Double claiming could be a perfectly innocent mistake. One might think the rule applies only to multiple homes within a particular county. Or a home owner might buy a new house and keep the old one as a rental, forgetting to cancel the credit on the rental. Some probably have not been so innocent, and without a statewide system to cross check ownership, it could be fairly easy to pull off. Property taxes, after all, are collected by the county in which the property sits, and until recently, there was no real statewide database to turn to.
Now there is. And it’s catching double dippers, of both the innocent and not so innocent variety.
Bottom line for them is that they’ll be paying back taxes owed on any second residence claimed as the family homestead. State law allows collection on taxes owed only after 2009, but amounts can still range in the thousands.
County Auditor Steve Saulter realizes that many of the 3,000 homeowners in Monroe County who failed to meet the end-of-year verification deadline likely just didn’t know about it. He’s giving them a big break, and instead of simply canceling the credit as state law allows, he’s having his people call everyone on the list to explain why they need to verify the status of their homes.
That’s good. The county doesn’t want to cheat homeowners of a credit that is rightfully theirs, just as homeowners shouldn’t be cheating the county.
One more thing: If you’re one of those homeowners who will be caught, know that your names will go to a collection agency. The agency already has collected $20,000 in Monroe County.
You don’t want to deal with that, for sure. Best call the auditor’s office if in doubt.
