Shift has made tax talk interesting (10/15/07)

The climate has changed.

It's just that simple and just that complicated.

The firestorm over property taxes in Indiana has - temporarily at least - shoved a whole bunch of things off the table.

Not so long ago, it would have been routine for any economic development package to include tax abatement, the phasing in of property taxes on improvements over a set period of time.

Not so long ago, state tax incentives would have been tossed at any serious industrial prospect.

Not so long ago, local loans from economic development income taxes (EDIT) would have been pretty much rubber-stamped.

But the climate has changed.

With the combination of market-based assessments and trending of property values, there's been a shift in the property tax burden in Indiana. And while you don't hear complaints from the owners of commercial and industrial property that might have been over-valued in the past, you certainly hear it from homeowners, particularly those in urban areas where house prices have shot up in recent years.

Now, in a rational world, one might argue that the currently aggrieved homeowners have been getting a break for years at the expense of commercial and industrial property, the fact is, we don't live in a rational world.

Instead, we live in an irrational world, one in which routine budget decisions by local government officials are now suddenly fraught with baggage.

And it looks as if we're going to live there for awhile.

Next year is an election year, and if anyone hoped to hear an intellectually disciplined and coherent debate on how to reform the process of raising tax revenue in this state, those hopes are a mirage. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]