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Capital Comments: How Much Will Homeowner Property Tax Bills Rise in 2024?

Last year Indiana homeowners were hit with property tax bill increases averaging 17 percent, an extraordinary increase. Will it happen again in...

Capital Comments: Farmland Property Taxes May Keep Increasing

The memo was posted at the end of December, on the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance website. It announced the base rate for farmland...

Capital Comments: Taking Inflation Apart

Since then inflation has come down a lot. As of November 2023, prices were 3.1 percent higher than a year before. That’s good news. 

Capital Comments: How Much Will Homeowner Property Taxes Rise in 2024?

The second installment for 2023 property taxes was due earlier this month. If you’re a homeowner, either you sent a check to your county...

Capital Comments: How Can a Homeowner Calculate the Cost of a School Referendum?

Election Day is coming up, and 12 Indiana school districts have put property tax referendums on the ballot. Voters who own homes will want to know,...

How Do States Manage Without Individual Income Taxes?

Indiana has an individual income tax to help pay for state services. Indiana raises about $8 billion a year from its state income tax, which is 36%...

Capital Comments: Supply Chain Pressure is Easing, and so is Inflation

The 12-month inflation rate began to rise in early 2021 and peaked at 8.9 percent in June 2022. Since then it’s fallen to 3.3 percent. Not so...

Capital Comments: Indiana State Balances and the Pension Stabilization Fund

The Indiana fiscal new year is upon us, having begun on July 1. The big New Year’s celebration happened on July 13, with the...

Capital Comments: Will the Inflation Rate Keep Falling?

Inflation is coming down. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures the Consumer Price Index, reported the 12-month inflation rate for May at...

Capital Comments: The General Assembly Delivers Some Property Tax Relief

Indiana homeowner tax bills increased 17 percent on average this year, the largest increase in years. Other property owners saw big increases too....

Capital Comments: An Extra Billion and a Half in State Revenue

The state revenue forecast upped its prediction of revenues for the rest of this fiscal year and the coming biennium, 2023-25, by $1.5 billion over...

Capital Comments: Property Tax Bills are Increasing a Lot in 2023

Indiana county treasurers soon will mail property tax bills to owners of homes, rental housing, farmland, and businesses. Most will see big...

Capital Comments: Solar Energy Projects and Property Taxes

Utilities are building a lot of solar energy projects in Indiana. Fields of solar panels will become a common part of our landscape. This may help...

Capital Comments: Farmland Property Tax Misery Has Company

Farmland assessments for property taxes are going up.  So are home, rental housing and business assessments. Property tax misery has a lot of...

Capital Comments: State Revenue Growth Will Return to Normal

Thursday, December 15, was a much-anticipated day at the Indiana Statehouse. It was Revenue Forecast Day, when the General Assembly heard the...

Capital Comments: Holiday Inflation Cheer

The holidays are here. Time for good cheer and happy thoughts, even if candy canes and sugar plums cost 7.8 percent more this year than last.

Capital Comments: Cost of Living Adjustments

Inflation has been so low for so long that we hardly noticed them. Now inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years, and COLAs are in the...

Capital Comments: The Housing Market is Cooling Off

The Federal Reserve is serious about battling inflation. They’ve raised their policy interest rate from near zero in February to an average...

Capital Comments: Is this a Recession?

Is this a recession? Real gross domestic product has dropped for two straight quarters. Real GDP is our measure of goods and services produced,...

Capital Comments: $6 Billion in Balances

Mid-July is number-cruncher nirvana if you follow the Indiana state budget. That’s when the State Budget Agency releases its closeout for the...

Inflation and Indiana School District Budgets

The inflation rate in May was 8.6 percent, the highest since the bad old days of the Great Inflation 40 years ago. We’re all paying higher...

Capital Comments: Shocked and Not Shocked by Home Assessments

Every year about this time homeowners receive a Form 11 from their county assessor. It’s the notice of assessment of land and structures, and...

Capital Comments: The Residential Share of Property Taxes is on the Rise

Here’s one way to think about property taxes: The local government sets its budget, subtracts all other tax revenue, and raises the remainder...

Capital Comments: What Will Happen to Inflation?

The inflation rate was 7.5 percent from January 2021 to January 2022, the highest inflation in 40 years. It arrived suddenly and unexpectedly. A...

Capital Comments: Farmland Assessments will Increase for Taxes in 2023

Farmland property taxes have been falling. Total property taxes paid by agricultural property owners fell 2.3 percent per year from 2017 to 2021,...

Capital Comments: What Happens to Property Taxes During Inflation?

The property tax is the biggest source of tax revenue for most Indiana local governments, and they were worried about the effect of the COVID...

Capital Comments: We Finally Know How the Recession Will Affect Property Taxes

What will be the effect of the COVID recession on the property taxes that fund Indiana local governments? I’ve been thinking and writing...

Capital Comments: Birth Rates Have Been Falling for a Long Time

Capital Comments: What Three Forecasts Say About Our Economic Future

Where is our economy going? Let’s ask some folks whose job it is to forecast the future of the U.S. economy. How about looking at three...

Capital Comments: Last Year’s Recession Hits Indiana Local Governments Next Year

The National Bureau of Economic Research is our quasi-official umpire of recessions and expansions. Last year it marked the peak of the last...

Capital Comments: Reasons to Celebrate the Indiana Fiscal New Year

Happy belated New Year, everyone! I mean the Indiana Fiscal New Year 2022, which started on July 1. The State Budget Agency celebrates the event...

Capital Comments: What Kind of Inflation Problem Do We Have?

In May the consumer price index was 4.9% higher than it was 12 months before. The last time we saw an inflation rate that high was July 2008. The...

Capital Comments: A State Revenue Forecast for the Ages

On April 15, toward the end of the 2021 session of the Indiana General Assembly, the State Budget Committee heard the revised revenue forecast. It...

Capital Comments: Pent-Up Demand, Then and Now

What can history teach us about the demand for goods and services post-pandemic? Larry Deboer knows.

Capital Comments: It's Tax Season. Where Do Your Local Taxes Go?

Tax season is coming up. Federal income taxes are due on May 17th this year. The due date for Indiana’s state and local income taxes remains...

Capital Comments: Okun, Phillips and Our Economy

If you want to be remembered in economics, get yourself a curve. There’s the Lorenz curve, the Laffer curve, the Kuznets curve, and, probably...

Capital Comments: The State Revenue Forecast: We Might be OK

Can it be, is it possible, that 2021 won’t be terrible? The state revenue forecast was released on December 16 to provide a starting point...

Capital Comments: A Tale of Two Recessions

The Great Recession began after the economy peaked in December 2007, and then continued for 18 months through June 2009. It was the longest...

Capital Comments: COVID Recession Makes Farmland Tax Predictions Harder

Capital Comments: Don’t get spun: What’s happening in our economy, right now?

Forecasts? Don’t talk about forecasts. You kidding me? I just want to know what’s happening now!

Capital Comments: Rents, Telecommuting and Harry Potter

The wizards in Harry Potter’s Britain use many forms of transportation. Brooms, but also floo powder, portkeys, flying vehicles, the Night...

Capital Comments: Trouble for Indiana’s State Budget

Revenues fell 8 percent below forecast for the year, 23 percent from March through June. We used $850 million in balances to cover that shortfall,...

Latest Capital Comments Looks at School Referenda Results

Journalists, school officials and local government enthusiasts joined Purdue Extension’s Larry DeBoer and Tamara Ogle (@INTaxRockstars) on...