From the Terre Haute Tribune-Star:
Mayor Duke Bennett is warning the City Council – and anyone else who will listen – about the impact to Terre Haute’s budget if Indiana’s business personal property tax is jettisoned by the state Legislature.
Personal property taxes, which are collected on business equipment, provide more than $4 million to the city’s approximately $33 million general fund budget each year, according to county figures. If the tax is lifted, the city would lose that money and, in addition, the Terre Haute Sanitary District would lose nearly $1 million.
“We can’t sustain another $4 million hit on the general fund,” Bennett said in his office Thursday afternoon. That would be on top of millions of dollars in losses over the past six years due to Indiana’s property tax caps, he said.
Loss of the personal property tax revenue would mean cutting about 150 employees, Bennett said. “A big portion of that would be policemen and firemen,” he said. “We’ve cut all of the other areas to the bone, basically.”
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http://www.tribstar.com/local/x1005126375/Bennett-says-city-budget-can-t-absorb-biz-tax-loss
