Tax bills for 2007 pay 2008 were mailed out Friday and should start arriving in your mailboxes next week.
That said, what you find when you open them may look a little different than the bills you have dealt with in previous years.
According to Elkhart County Treasurer Larry Ernest, this will be the first year that a state-prescribed uniform tax bill will be used by all 92 counties in the state.
However, Ernest said that implementation of the new bill format is one of the primary reasons behind the long delay in getting the bills out to taxpayers.
“Well I think the Legislature passed the bill for the change back in 2005 or 2006, and then Vandenburg County in Evansville did a test pilot to see how it would go,” Ernest said. “Then, in April of this year, they changed it before anyone even started using it. So in a normal year we’d have had our bills out in the first week of April, but they didn’t even finalize this format until April of this year.”
Regarding the reasons behind the change, Ernest said he isn’t entirely sure why the change was made, but noted that the call for change came with the appointment of Cheryl Musgrave as commissioner for the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance.
“I don’t know exactly why the change was made,” Ernest said. “The DLGF had a new commissioner, and she wanted things done a little differently I guess.”
Change not liked
As to his overall opinion of the new format, Ernest said he sees it as more of a headache than an improvement.
“First of all I think it’s a huge waste of money. The form went from a letter size to a legal size piece of paper, and it’s in three-color ink,” Ernest said. He noted that each 2008 property tax bill will be printed on two legal sized pages, with information on the front and back of each piece of paper.
“It’s also supposed to provide the taxpayers with a comparison statement from last year’s bill to this year’s bill. And I don’t even know how many will look at it, and how many will just toss it in the trash.”
New software
In addition to the physical changes to the bills, Ernest said his department has also been required to convert to a new tax billing software.
“We also had to convert last year’s data to do this comparison statement,” Ernest said. “Not all the data has been converted, so we’ve had some problems with the actual comparison.”
All changes and issues aside, Ernest said current plans for his department are to have the new bills ready and sent out by this coming Friday.
Taxes will be due in two payments — Dec. 2 and Jan. 13.
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Tax bills on the way, and they look different
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