By Sydney Byerly
The Indiana Citizen
July 8, 2025
Saying that he’s continuing to hear from constituents across the state about high property taxes, Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith proposes a multipronged solution, including having homeowners pay a property tax based on 1% of the purchase price of their home, instead of one based on unpredictable assessed values.
“I’ve challenged property taxes a lot because I believe it’s not really your property if you get to pay the government rent to stay there. So … I think, fundamentally, I think that’s an issue,” Beckwith said during his May 21 Muncie town hall.
Property tax is money paid to the government each year for owning a home, business/commercial building or land in Indiana, even if the property’s mortgage is paid off. The money helps pay for schools, police and fire departments, parks, libraries and roads.
However, inflation in the housing market has caused property tax bills for Hoosier homeowners to balloon in recent years.
Larry DeBoer, a retired professor of agricultural economics from Purdue University, conducted a study of Indiana’s property tax policies over the past 50 years that was published by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, which also examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on property taxes in the Hoosier State. From 2022 to 2023, property taxes on homes rose by 17.1%, with an additional 6.6% increase from 2023 to 2024. Meanwhile, farmland saw a 26.5% jump in assessed value for 2024, up from a 10.5% increase the year before, driven by pandemic-related spikes in commodities demand.
Although demand is cooling, DeBoer said, higher tax bills are still arriving — particularly for farmers — even as residential property taxes are beginning to stabilize.
Gov. Mike Braun campaigned on reducing the property tax burden on Hoosiers, and the Indiana General Assembly passed a bill aimed at cutting property taxes on homes, farms and businesses. Beckwith appears to be the only state official calling for a purchase-price-based system. Moreover, he has described property taxes as “immoral” and advocated for the elimination of the tax altogether.
A rally for property tax relief at the statehouse on St. Patrick’s Day drew a crowd of hundreds, dressed mostly in green. Prior to the rally, Beckwith, encouraged attendees on the social-media platform X to “wear green to let lawmakers know they can’t use our homes as an endless money printing machine.”
Beckwith, during the March 17 rally, said that he decided to publicly campaign for his current seat because “we are being taxed way too much.”
“I’ve heard countless stories from people today and throughout the last two years where their property taxes have increased over 50%, 60% and even 100% in one case,” Beckwith said in a video posted to his social media from the property tax rally, stopping in the middle of his speech to point at someone in the crowd holding a sign saying his bill increased by 63%. “That is egregious and we need to stop it and we’re going to stop it.”
Braun kept talking about property tax relief once he got into office. At his State of the State address, the governor recognized a couple in the audience whose property taxes had doubled.
The legislature passed Senate Bill 1, a property tax relief and reform measure, which, according to a fiscal analysis, will save Hoosier homeowners $1.2 billion. On the day he signed the bill into law, Braun said the measure reflected the “core promise” of his Freedom and Opportunity Agenda.
“Senate Bill 1 cuts property taxes for most Hoosier homeowners, farmers, and businesses, limits future tax hikes, and makes the tax system fairer, more transparent and easier to understand,” Braun said.
Three days before the Senate passed the House version of SB 1 and sent the bill to the governor’s desk, Beckwith blasted the legislation, saying it was too difficult to understand to become a law.
“The Gov needs to VETO this thing, call a special session and demand the legislature pass something that the average Hoosier can understand without hiring army of lawyers and accountants!!” Beckwith wrote.
Beckwith’s office told The Indiana Citizen that the lieutenant governor stands by his previous comment for Braun to veto the bill.
Also, on April 12, Beckwith posted on X his proposal for linking the property tax to the purchase price. He said he had been pushing the idea for two years and gotten positive feedback from local officials.
“Ultimately the vision for the state of Indiana should be the complete elimination of property taxes. But until that day comes, remove the ‘assessed value’ system and replace it with an ‘actual value’ system and much of our pain goes away,” Beckwith wrote.
The reactions on social media varied. Facebook users latched onto the notion of eliminating property tax altogether and expressed skepticism and disbelief that it would ever happen. Meanwhile commenters on X supported the idea, saying it was common sense and that it would provide relief.
One response on Facebook deadpanned, “You know that’s never going to happen. LOL.”
In a Greenfield town hall on June 4, Beckwith was asked about the “confusing” and lengthy SB 1 and he said he wasn’t there to defend the bill, because “the thing that screws everyone over is this convoluted, nonsensical system of basing your property taxes on somebody’s assessed value of your property.”
“I think that screws you over more than anything else. It’s an opinion that somebody gives about the value of your house,” Beckwith said. “(It) doesn’t mean your house is worth that much. It means that maybe your neighbor did something to their house, and by default, now your house is worth more.”
Justin Ross, professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, explained switching to a purchase price method would distort the market and require more than a change in state law. Basing property taxes on the purchase price would likely require a constitutional amendment to allow for nonuniform taxation, since properties would be taxed differently depending on when they were purchased.
In Indiana, the system in use several decades ago was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in the case Town of St. John v. State Board of Tax Commissioners (1998), because it violated the state’s requirement for uniform taxation — meaning people in similar situations should pay similar tax rates. This led to Indiana adopting its current market-value-based system, said Ross.
“A lot of the inefficiency would come from the tax code preventing relocation. Maybe I could earn more or reduce my time in traffic for work by moving, but the tax code would essentially punish me for making that move by revising the property tax basis. Locking up economic growth this way has been a substantial problem for California,” Ross said.
Beckwith’s office told The Indiana Citizen that the lieutenant governor is working with lawmakers to deliver “meaningful property tax relief” to Hoosiers. The office did not offer any specifics.
Also, Ross said switching to property taxes based on a home’s purchase price also could create inequities, such as identical homes being taxed differently based on purchase date. As an example, Ross said, consider that one person bought one side of a duplex in the 1990s, but someone purchased the other side more recently. With a property tax system based on purchase price, each owner would pay different taxes based on what year they bought the house – even if the duplex has remained the same over that period of time. Such a situation would violate the uniformity that the market value system, currently in place in Indiana, seeks to create.
Currently in Indiana, the property tax process starts with an assessor determining your property’s value. Like many other states, Indiana uses a method called mass appraisal, which evaluates your property alongside similar ones in your area. Factors such as the property’s age, quality and condition are taken into account. Each year, through a process called annual adjustment or “trending,” assessors review recent real estate sales to decide whether property values in your area should be updated to reflect current market conditions.
Beckwith has acknowledged cutting property taxes will directly impact local government, but he has wavered in his concern about the pain municipalities would likely feel.
At the Muncie town hall, the lieutenant governor said any changes made to the state’s property tax system will have to be done “in a strategic and surgical way” to avoid upending municipal and county governments.
“So … as much as I hate property taxes, you can’t just rip the rug out from underneath local governments, because there wouldn’t be money to fund schools, roads, police, fire,” he said.
However, at the Greenfield town hall, Beckwith has another solution for local governments: “Tighten your belt.”
“So, we’ve gotten heat from local governments who thought it went too far,” Beckwith told the crowd. “And so, then we have people like yourself and me. I agree with you — I didn’t think it went far enough … And so again, it’s a moral issue.”
When it comes to the idea of taxing property based on purchase price, rather than market value, Ross pointed to California, which has a similar practice that has significantly distorted its housing market. The Golden State limits property tax increases to 2% annually, regardless of actual market value increases, creating a situation where long-term homeowners pay significantly lower property taxes than new buyers – even on the same street. Because of this disparity, homeowners are encouraged to stay in their homes longer, which in turn has reduced the available housing supply and contributed to that state’s housing shortage.
Overall, Ross warned that such a change in the taxation system may be both legally problematic and economically inefficient.
Ross also said that local governments in Indiana would have to adjust their behavior if a purchase-price taxation system was initiated, because they currently benefit from frequent property sales at rising values.
A purchase-price system also could open the door to tax-avoidance strategies, with people potentially manipulating reported purchase prices to lower their tax burden, according to Ross. For example, he said, in a hypothetical scenario, if a home is purchased and comes furnished the buyer might try to fib the numbers and say they purchased a home for $5,000 but the fridge included with the home cost $200,000, to avoid paying higher taxes.
“Basing property taxes on purchase price would surely result in lots of attempts to game the purchase between the buyer and sellers,” Ross said.
Changing the policy so drastically, Ross said, could lead to reduced mobility, as homeowners choose to stay in homes longer than they otherwise would have done to avoid higher taxes on a new purchase — resulting in inefficient location and housing choices driven by tax considerations, rather than personal or economic needs, because the new tax code incentivizes them to do so. For example, someone with grown children may choose to stay in their home that is in a good school district, so their property tax values don’t reset with a new, much-higher purchase price.
In his “Unscripted” podcast episode with Rep. J.D. Prescott, R-Union City, back in March, Beckwith called the current property tax system “immoral” and said it places an “unfair burden on homeowners and farmers,” claiming to ground his statements with philosophical and historical context.
As he often does, Beckwith gave his interpretation of U.S. history to reinforce his views. He cited Enlightenment philosopher John Locke’s idea of life, liberty and property as “natural rights,” along with Thomas Jefferson’s substitution of “the pursuit of happiness” for “property” in the Declaration of Independence, before Beckwith concluded that the right to property is therefore fundamental, so taxing property can be equated to taxing life or liberty. Beckwith also said, during the podcast, that property shouldn’t be taxed at all, and real reform will require recognizing property as a God-given right.
Ross suggested that people could attempt to make this same argument about all taxes, but taxes are a large part of how things are funded in this country.
“All taxes are coercive by definition,” Ross said. “Taxes on income are arguably a tax on your labor … (just like) taxes on your consumption are akin to taking away your ability to consume. This is just a feature of taxation and not special to property tax.”
Sydney Byerly is a political reporter who grew up in New Albany, Indiana. Before joining The Citizen, Sydney reported news for TheStatehouseFile.com and most recently managed and edited The Corydon Democrat & Clarion News in southern Indiana. She earned her bachelor’s in journalism at Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism (‘Sco Griz!).
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
