Legislators are struggling to control rising property taxes on farmland. Farmland is taxed not on what it would be worth to someone else, but its productivity value as farmland. Purdue property tax specialist Larry DeBoer says those assessments are four years out of date — the state delayed assessments by two years after the Supreme Court threw out the old system in 1998, and has never caught up. And DeBoer says the state uses a six-year rolling average, after excluding the highest-valued year from the calculations. That means it’ll be a few more years before pumped-up values from strong crops as far back as eight years ago drop out of the formula. Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Chairman Brandt Hershman (R-Buck Creek) says the lag means assessments are up 18-percent right as flooding has wiped out much of this year’s crop. Legislators have temporarily frozen soil productivity factors the last two years to slow down double-digit increases.
A legislative study committee, which Hershman chairs, is reviewing the issue, but Hershman acknowledges the problem is so complex that the committee is unlikely to issue any recommendations before the full General Assembly convenes in January.
