Indiana

Indiana caps the property tax bill itself rather than the rate, and the caps sit in the state constitution rather than in a statute a legislature can revisit.

Article 10, Section 1, ratified in 2008 and fully phased in by 2010, limits the annual bill to one per cent of gross assessed value on an owner-occupied homestead, two per cent on other residential property and agricultural land, and three per cent on everything else.

The gap between what the local rates would have produced and what the cap allows appears on the bill as a circuit breaker credit, so a Hoosier at the cap is paying a fixed proportion of value no matter what the schools, county, township and library levies add up to.

The one per cent tier is reserved for a qualifying homestead, so a house that stops being someone’s primary residence moves to the two per cent tier and the bill can double without the assessment changing at all.

The homestead definition is also narrower than most people assume, being the dwelling plus one acre, so extra acreage and detached structures beyond that allowance are already sitting in a higher tier while the owner is still living there.

Farmland is assessed on a statewide base rate rather than on sale prices, then capped at two per cent, which is why Indiana farm ground and Indiana houses move on quite different tax logic.

Foreclosure is judicial, so the lender sues and a sheriff’s sale follows, with a three-month wait between judgment and sale for most residential mortgages.