It’s just not real fun.
You may have noticed the 2023-pay-2024 Property Tax Rates chart was published on the back page of Thursday’s N-B. It’s a bunch of numbers. By themselves, they don’t mean much.
Meanwhile, the resulting 2024 tax amounts have been posted on the county’s GIS website. The bills are not ready and will not be mailed for several weeks. While the tax rate chart published Thursday has been certified by the state, the tax amounts on the GIS website have not. Oops —as I was typing this, Wells County Auditor Lisa McCormick emailed that they are now certified after being reviewed and vetted by the state.
So, if you’d like to see what your 2024 tax bill will be, you can go to the county’s website and click on the “GIS” in the top menu bar and go from there.
Regular readers of this Saturday space know that I seem to have developed a weird fascination with property taxes. Someone used the word “fetish” but that sounds even weirder. I had been planning to do a story on the same day the tax charts were published, explaining what these numbers might mean as the process moves along. However, as I was working on that last weekend, I logged into the GIS to check on something and — voila — the 2024 numbers had been posted. Of course, I immediately did a comparison on our own home’s property taxes. Ouch. Our tax bill has gone up 27.8 percent this year. That is on top of a 33 percent increase two years ago. Our annual tax bill has essentially doubled since 2019.
While I am just beginning to update my samples from across the county that I’ve been tracking the past few years, this is the highest percentage increase I have seen so far. It is a distinction my wife and I are not excited to hold. Woe is we.
So from the get-go, I knew this would not be a fun exercise. But what the heck, a little humor: If your grandkids (or children) are fans of the Paw Patrol television show, perhaps you can indulge me in proclaiming that you can be assured that “Chase is on the case.”
Some articles will be forthcoming, but I thought I’d share a few early tidbits:
• On average, the budgets of the county’s 24 taxing units went up by about 7 percent. The county’s total assessed values went up a little over 9 percent. The result: a more than 13-percent increase in the tax levy, which is how much is collected in property taxes. So it seems logical that the average property tax bill will be about 13 percent higher than last year. Individual results will vary.
• While some tax units had significant budget increases percentage-wise (Poneto topped the list with a 35-percent increase) seven units’ budgets actually decreased.
• Residential rental properties have evidently seen the biggest increase. The category as a whole nearly doubled in tax levies. One person who owns a rental property shared with me that unit’s tax bill has doubled.
• The new Bluffton Fire Territory is a definite factor if you live anywhere in Lancaster or Harrison townships. That was known going in; there were at least three public hearings in early 2023 in which we were told that city taxpayers could expect a 6 percent bump while rural properties would see a 12 percent hike. We will delve into that and see how their predictions worked out.
• How much impact did the county’s decision to reduce the Property Tax Replacement Credit have? We will see.
• We have, the past two years, examined the trend of who pays how much of the property tax pie and how that has changed over the years. Spoiler alert: Homeowners’ share has increased once again.
• The state legislature says local governments cannot raise property tax levies more than 4 percent this year. So why are we getting hit with a plus-13-percent increase?
We have a close circle of friends from college. One of those characters (who unfortunately is no longer with us) would often remark as we parted after a group gathering: “Well, it’s been real and it’s been fun. But it’s not been real fun.”
Of course, he was kidding. Taxes? Not so much.
Stay tuned.
miller@news-banner.com
