~Dr. Larry DeBoer May 24, 2022   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 it shows the previous assessed value of the home, and the new value for taxes payable next year. I’m a homeowner, and I got …

~Dr. Larry DeBoer March 30, 2022   Here’s one way to think about property taxes: The local government sets its budget, subtracts all other tax revenue, and raises the remainder with the property tax levy. The assessor measures the value of all the parcels of taxable property inside the boundaries of the government. Then the …

~Dr. Larry DeBoer February 22, 2022   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 year ago the inflation rate was 1.4 percent, which was lower than the 1.7 percent average rate over the previous decade. It’s an unwelcome …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer January 28, 2022   Farmland property taxes have been falling. Total property taxes paid by agricultural property owners fell 2.3 percent per year from 2017 to 2021, mostly because of lower farmland assessed values. But farmland prices are rising. A Purdue Agricultural Economics survey showed that average farmland selling prices increased …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer January 4, 2022   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 recession on property tax revenues. But rising home values in 2020 will increase assessed values for tax bills in 2022. The federal …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer November 29, 2021   What will be the effect of the COVID recession on the property taxes that fund Indiana local governments? I’ve been thinking and writing about the possibilities for a year and a half. Now we have enough data to answer that question. No spoilers, though. Let’s consider what …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer October 20, 2021   Americans are having fewer children. Reports this past summer showed that the birth rate dropped in 2020, to 56 births per 1,000 women age 15 to 44. Only 5.6 percent of women in their child-bearing years had babies. Early indications for 2021 showed a further decline. Birth …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer September 22, 2021   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 forecasts – one from government economists, one from academic economists, and one from business economists. The Congressional Budget Office updated its …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer August 19, 2021   The National Bureau of Economic Research is our quasi-official umpire of recessions and expansions. Last year it marked the peak of the last decade’s expansion as February 2020.  In July it marked the trough—the economy’s low point—as April 2020. That made the pandemic recession the shortest but …

~by Dr. Larry DeBoer July 22, 2021     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 every summer with a budget closeout, looking back at the year just ended and ahead to the next biennium. This time, …