25. In this case, the Petitioners contend that the subject
property’s land should be classified as agricultural rather than residential.
The statutory and regulatory scheme for assessing agricultural land requires the
Board to treat challenges to those assessments differently than other
assessment challenges. Indeed, the Indiana General Assembly directed the DLGF
to establish rules for determining the true tax value of agricultural land.
Ind. Code § 6-1.1-4-13(b). The DLGF, in turn, established a base rate to be
used in assessing agricultural land across the State of Indiana.
26. Indiana Code § 6-1.1-4-13 states, however, that “[i]n
assessing or reassessing land, the land shall be assessed as agricultural only
when it is devoted to agricultural use.” Ind. Code § 6-1.1-4-13(a) (emphasis
added). The word “devote” means “to attach the attention or center of
activities of (oneself) wholly or chiefly on a specified object, field, or
objective.” WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY AT 620.
27. It is undisputed that the subject property is a 1.4 acre
residential lot in a platted residential subdivision and subject to covenants
and restrictions germane to residential use. The property’s improvements
consist of a detached garage intended for residential use, and prior to the
Petitioners’ purchase, the property was used as a residence and granted a homestead
exemption. The improvements on the property remain unchanged. Neither vacancy
nor use as “climate-controlled storage” renders the building agricultural. Many
activities that are “agricultural” in some sense are entirely compatible with
residential uses. A pet rabbit and a vegetable garden does not entitle a
taxpayer to an agricultural assessment. The law does not indicate how many
verses of “Old McDonald” it takes to reclassify land from residential to
agricultural for property tax assessment purposes. In this case, the
Petitioners have failed to persuade the Board that evidence of seasonal boarding
of rabbits, pigs, and goats for children’s 4-H programs is sufficient to change
the subject property into a barn and barnyard. Thus the Petitioners have failed
to raise a prima facie case that the subject property’s classification as
residential is in error.
28. Additionally, the Board finds no evidence that the
property’s improvements are overvalued. Regardless of the use, or intended use,
of the garage and the apartment above it, the Petitioners offered nothing to
prove its market value-in-use, or even suggest an alternative value.
