Property tax reform has been among the top priorities of Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and several of your state lawmakers. However, Senate Bill 1, which would cut property taxes for Indiana’s home and land owners, has been amended this week by State Senators in the Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee.
Republicans on the committee agreed to gut major portions of Braun’s proposal—including the removal of an annual 3-percent cap on the growth of property tax bills, an annual cap of 2-percent on senior citizens, and a provision that would allow an increase in the state’s homestead deductions.
Instead, the amended bill places a 1-percent cap on property tax increases in 2027 and a 2-percent cap in 2028. The amended bill also expands eligibility for senior and veteran tax deductions and creates a new property tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
Indiana Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith, who also serves as the state’s Secretary of Agriculture, told Hoosier Ag Today those amendments to Senate Bill 1 do not provide a sufficient amount of property tax relief for Hoosiers who been hit hard by skyrocketing property tax bills.
“What Gov. Braun and I are doing—we were sent here with the mandate to fight for tax relief property. Specifically, property tax relief was the thing we heard more than anything else on the campaign trail for the last year-and-a-half. That to me is Priority One,” says Beckwith.
“We’ve got to go in and say, ‘Our farmers can’t continue to have this 26.4 percent increase of year-to-year property taxes, like Indiana Farm Bureau [says according to] their study and show that. Small farms can’t sustain that for very long, so we’ve got to move now. Now is the time—with President Trump doing what he’s doing and with Gov. Braun doing what he’s doing, and I think the legislators need to get on board with that as well,” he says.
Beckwith adds that many local community leaders who are complaining about Braun’s property tax relief plan are likely the ones who have not otherwise been good stewards of Hoosier taxpayers’ funds.
“I also think there’s a mindset problem,” he says. “With the small communities, the first thing you’ll hear them say—especially these mayors and council members—they’ll say, ‘How are we going to replace the revenue if you cut property taxes?’ I always say that’s the wrong question to be asking. You need to first start by saying, ‘What can we do, as a municipality, to make sure that we are cutting all the fat away,’ and then, let’s talk about what you need at that point.
“They just want to keep living ‘high on the hog’ and say, ‘Oh, we’ve grown government. We’ve created government jobs. We’ve built more bureaucracy. Now, we have to keep paying for it or we have to cut it. Gov. Braun and I are not okay with taxing more, so there has to be cuts,” says Beckwith.
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You can hear Lt. Gov. Beckwith’s full conversation with Hoosier Ag Today’s Eric Pfeiffer as part of the latest episode of the Indiana Ag Policy Podcast.
