Property Taxes in the Indianapolis Metro (IN)

1. How Indiana property tax works structurally

Indiana has no state property tax — it's entirely a local revenue source. The county Assessor identifies and values property, the county Auditor applies deductions/credits and calculates each bill once the state has certified local budgets, and the county Treasurer mails bills and collects payment. Every local taxing unit in a county — school corporations, townships, cities/towns, library districts, and the county government itself — adopts its own annual budget and levy independently through its own governing body. The state's Department of Local Government Finance (DLGF) reviews and approves each unit's budget, rate, and levy, then issues an annual "budget order" for each of Indiana's 92 counties certifying the approved figures the auditor then bills against. Sources: Indiana DLGF, "Tax Bill 101"; IN.gov FAQ, "How much property tax do I owe?"; IN.gov FAQ, "What is the Department of Local Government Finance and what does it do?"

2. Homestead deductions -- a five-year phase-out now underway

Through 2025, Indiana's Homestead Standard Deduction is the lesser of 60% of a home's assessed value or a dollar cap of $48,000 (Indiana Code 6-1.1-12-37) — a cap that itself replaced a $45,000 figure when the legislature repealed the separate mortgage deduction outright, effective January 1, 2023. Senate Enrolled Act 1 (2025), Indiana's biggest property tax overhaul in decades, now phases that flat-dollar deduction down to zero over five years while phasing a percentage-based Supplemental Homestead Deduction up, per the Indiana DLGF's own Cockerill Memo of June 12, 2025:

SEA 1 also created a brand-new Supplemental Homestead Credit — the lesser of $300 or 10% of a homeowner's tax liability — starting with taxes first due in 2026. Two older flat deductions were repealed and converted into credits for the 2025 assessment year: the $14,000 Over-65 Deduction became an Over-65 Credit capped at $150 (income-limited to $60,000 AGI single / $70,000 joint, based on income from two years prior — this is a separate program from Indiana's older, Social-Security-COLA-indexed "Over-65 Circuit Breaker," whose Pay-2026 income thresholds are $34,494.86 single / $45,993.15 married; the two shouldn't be confused), and the Blind/Disabled Deduction became a Blind/Disabled Credit capped at $125 with no income limit. Disabled-veteran deductions (up to $38,960 combined, per the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs) were reinstated for 2025 largely unchanged, but a subsequent bill, House Bill 1210, reported signed in March 2026, converts them into flat credits ($350, plus $250 more at age 62+, or a full exemption for totally disabled veterans) for taxes payable in 2027 — we could not independently confirm HB 1210's exact effective date against a primary legislative source, so a veteran homeowner should confirm current treatment directly with the county auditor.

3. The circuit breaker caps: 1% / 2% / 3%

Indiana's constitution (via a 2010 voter referendum) caps total property tax liability as a share of gross assessed value: 1% for homesteads, 2% for other residential property, agricultural land, and long-term-care property, and 3% for nonresidential real property and personal property. If a property's combined local tax bill would exceed its cap, the county auditor applies a "circuit breaker credit" for the excess — a hard ceiling regardless of how high local levies climb. These percentages remain unchanged as of DLGF's November 13, 2025 fact sheet on the caps, which also notes a minor Pay-2025 clarification that residential yard structures now count within the definition of residential property. Separately, analysis from the Indiana Capital Chronicle (Nov. 17, 2025) projects that as SEA 1's homestead deductions phase out and local levies rise to compensate, more properties — particularly non-homestead ones — will bump against their circuit-breaker ceiling over the coming years; that's a journalistic projection, not a DLGF-confirmed figure.

4. SEA 1 (2025): Indiana's biggest property tax reform in decades

Described by Purdue Extension as Indiana's third major property-tax overhaul in roughly 50 years (after reforms in 1973 and 2008), SEA 1 phases in changes from 2026 through 2031: the Section 2 deduction/credit schedule above; a jump in the business personal-property tax exemption from $80,000 to $2 million in assessed value starting 2027; elimination, in a reported 59 counties, of local income tax credits some had used for property-tax relief, starting 2028; and full elimination of the flat Homestead Standard Deduction by 2031. A companion overhaul of Indiana's local income tax (LIT) system — originally set to cap county LIT rates and let cities/towns levy their own LIT starting 2028 — was delayed a year to 2029 by House Bill 1210 after nearly half of Indiana's larger municipalities faced significant projected revenue cuts under the original plan; HB 1210 instead creates county-level "Municipal Unit Strategic Taskforces" to negotiate customized local income tax distribution, with a state report due December 1, 2026. Indiana Capital Chronicle's own modeling (Nov. 17, 2025) suggests the reform is a net tax cut for the "average" owner-occupied home but not a uniform one — because a flat-dollar deduction is being replaced by a percentage-based one, the analysis estimates homes below roughly $102,740 in value could see disproportionate percentage increases while higher-value homes benefit more; this is the outlet's own economic analysis, not an official DLGF projection, and worth treating as such.

5. Representative rates by county

As with every other metro on this site, we deliberately don't publish one "the rate is X" figure for a county — Indiana doesn't actually have single county-wide rates. Every property sits in a specific taxing district (a unique overlap of county, township, school corporation, city/town, and any library, fire, or special district), and DLGF certifies a separate combined rate per $100 of assessed value for each district every year. What follows are actual DLGF-certified combined district rates (not a single fund's rate) from the state's own "2025 Certified Tax Rates by District" report, dated February 13, 2025 — always confirm the exact district rate for a specific address with the county auditor.

Marion County's own January 14, 2025 Budget Order independently confirmed the Center Township figure and additionally showed Washington Township at 2.5390 and Wayne Township at 3.8784 — a reminder that rates vary meaningfully even within one county depending on which township and school district a specific address falls in. We also found a real, unresolved conflict for Hendricks County's Plainfield district — 2.7734 per Hendricks County's own individually filed Budget Order versus 1.9394 per the statewide compiled document, likely reflecting that Plainfield spans more than one township — so we're flagging both figures rather than guessing which applies to a specific address. Indiana reassesses on a rolling four-year cyclical schedule (roughly 25% of parcels in each county physically reassessed per year) plus an annual "trending" adjustment applied to every property based on the prior year's local sales ratios, which can change assessed value even without a sale or physical reassessment. Sources: Indiana DLGF, "2025 Certified Tax Rates by District" (Feb. 13, 2025); Marion, Hamilton, and Hendricks County individual 2025 Budget Orders; DLGF, "Statewide Cyclical Reassessment"; DLGF, "Fact Sheet: Annual Adjustments" (Apr. 29, 2024).

6. Appealing your assessment

File Form 130 with the township or county assessor — generally by June 15 of the assessment year if your Form 11 assessment notice was mailed before May 1, or by June 15 of the year your tax bill arrives if it was mailed on or after May 1 (certain error types get up to three years). Filing triggers an informal meeting with the assessor's office; if that doesn't resolve it, the county Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals (PTABOA) must hold a hearing within 180 days and documents its ruling on Form 115. From there, file Form 131 with the state Indiana Board of Tax Review (IBTR) within 45 days of the PTABOA determination (or immediately if PTABOA misses its 180-day deadline); the IBTR must hold its own hearing within a year, with further appeal available to the Indiana Tax Court. One rule worth knowing either way: if an assessment increases more than 5% over the prior year without a corresponding renovation, new improvement, zoning change, or new use, the burden of proof shifts to the assessor rather than the homeowner.

7. How we keep this page current

Sections 1, 3, and 6 describe stable structural law that doesn't change often. Sections 2 and 4 describe SEA 1's multi-year phase-in, which is genuinely in motion through 2031 — deductions, credits, and the local-income-tax overhaul all shift on a set schedule, and at least one piece (disabled-veteran credits under HB 1210) changed twice within about nine months during 2025-2026, so a homeowner should confirm current-year figures with the county auditor rather than relying on this page alone for a specific bill estimate. Section 5's district rates reflect DLGF's February 2025 certification and will be superseded by the next annual budget-order cycle. If you spot something on this page that's changed, or notice a broken link, we'd like to know — see our contact information.