From the Marshall County Pilot-News:
Residents of Plymouth could be in for a surprise in their tax bill for the coming year.
Plymouth Clerk-Treasurer Toni Hutchings gave some numbers to the Plymouth Common Council Monday that point to what could be a difficult tax season. Marshall County had a reassessment of property in 2012 for taxes to be paid in 2013. The reassessment is the first in Indiana since 2002. The numbers coming back have given Hutchings a reason for concern.
The property tax rate for residents of the city of Plymouth will jump from 2.5448 to 2.8582 per $100 of assessed value.
“That number really surprised a lot of people,” said Hutchings.
Maybe a bigger surprise was the drop in assessed property value in the city from $439,535,587 to $376,541,798 - a drop of almost $63,000,000.
“Ordinarily the assessed value goes up, this was a real surprise to all of us,” said Hutchings. “In 2006, they started doing a thing called ‘trending’ which watches changes so that you have an idea of what to expect at reassessment so that there won’t be a big shock. Nobody expected this.”
The vicious cycle is this - when assessed value goes down, tax rate goes up to enable government to receive the same revenue to provide services such as road maintenance, and emergency personnel. The added wild card is the “circuit breaker” law enacted by the Indiana General Assembly that places a cap on the amount of property tax that can be collected.
With the higher tax rate it is likely that more tax payers will hit that limit. There is virtually no way for government to raise that lost revenue.
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See the full article here:
http://www.thepilotnews.com/content/new-property-tax-assessment-could-have-bigger-impact-city
