2027 Johnson County Voter Forum | Oct. 10, 2026

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

My name is Ruchika Romka.

I'm a student professor of economics at Franklin College.

In the next 10 minutes or so, I will try my best to make you understand what are property taxes, how they are designed, what goes into your property taxes, and why do we need a property tax.

what my experience tells me that the frustration that people feel is usually not because they are paying taxes it's well basically because they do not understand how they are built and what they are used for so today we will try and understand property taxes your property tax bill that you see is basically a combination of two numbers that are multiplied together the one number comes from your assessed value of your home what your house is worth for and the other number comes for your local tax rate okay when they are multiplied together we get our property tax bill let's understand how that is good so first number that is your value of your home your property tax bill is your assessed value of your home basically how much your home is worth or what it will sell Every year, Indiana County has an assessor office that decides and evaluates your homework.

every few years indiana county requires a more intense process which is called a stranding that uses your current numbers so your assessor examines what is the worth of your property once that is decided that's your first number the other number that is your tax rate is a different story that is not being assessed at all it is said by your taxing units that serves your entrance.

So it is basically your county, your city, your township, your schools, your library districts, etc.

Each of those units adopts a budget and the rate is essentially whatever that is needed to meet that budget.

from your property, properties inside that property.

So when your bill changes, the question that we all need to ask is whether my value of my home has increased, SS value or my local tax rate has increased or both.

Okay.

So it is also worth remembering that why are we paying property taxes in the first place? What do we pay for? Your property taxes in Indiana counties mostly is the largest share goes towards funding local schools.

So they fund local schools followed by city or county government, libraries and town ownership.

So your property taxes are used towards local schools and the funding of libraries.

So that's worth keeping in mind the next time you are paying your property tax.

Also, let's try and understand this much better with the help of numbers.

Because I'm an economist, we work with numbers.

That's how we understand this stuff.

So say that your home is worth $200,000 before anything is applied to it.

Indiana automatically applies a home state reduction.

So this year, the value of home state reduction was $40,000.

So that is applied only to residential properties, not to any property which is not a primary residence.

So after that is applied, on the top of that, you also get whatever its remaining amount you get a supplemental reduction which is approximately 40 percent of what's left and after those reductions are applied if your value of home was assessed to be two hundred thousand dollars after those reduction that will come close to ninety six thousand dollars so your local tax rate is then applied to the smaller amount which is ninety six thousand dollars not the full two hundred thousand dollars So that's how two homes which have identically same values might have different numbers because of the reductions that you get on current data.

Also, something that matters to everyone present here is that this is changing.

Indiana passed a law in 2025 called as Senate Enrolled Act 1. that is going away with a flat reduction amount.