Map: How Much Money Your School District Lost To Indiana’s Property Tax Caps
StateImpact graphic / Google Fusion Tables / DLGF Data
This map shows how much of each Indiana school corporation’s local tax levy was lost to the state’s property tax caps in 2013. Note: Indiana’s Department of Local Government Finance does not have property tax cap data for LaPorte County, accounting for the gap in the map there.
Most school districts’ losses to Indiana’s property tax caps, which we’ve been discussing at great length recently, only amount to a drop in the bucket.
But as our brand new map shows, the 50 or 60 districts that have lost the largest shares of property tax dollars to the caps come from all over the state, featuring enrollments large and small.
What the map doesn’t show: The caps’ impact has grown since their debut. Property owners statewide got to keep more than $245 million last year that would’ve gone to school corporations if not for the caps — up $100 million from 2010.
(For a table listing every district’s losses, click here.)
Note how even in the state’s less-populated areas, a school district’s losses to the caps tend to be higher in incorporated cities or towns. As Purdue economist Larry DeBoer explains, that’s because a property owner in a city or town has to pay for more layers of government services than a property owner in an unincorporated, rural area.“If your [district] overlaps a city or town, you are much more likely to lose revenue from property tax cap credits than you are if you don’t overlap a city or town,” DeBoer tells StateImpact, adding that 90 percent of the property tax cap losses occur in these incorporated areas.
Four Indiana school corporations — the district in the tiny Ohio River town of Cannelton, along with Gary, Muncie and Franklin Township schools — lost more than half of their revenues to the caps.
Fourteen additional districts lost more than 20 percent of their revenues to the caps.
Still making sense of how the caps work? We’ve got just the video for you.