Personal Property Taxes 101

Based on one of the comments to my last post I am not sure that everyone knows exactly what Personal Property Taxes paid by businesses are.

All businesses pay Personal Property Taxes on all assets they use in their business... This tax is paid once a year to your Township.

I will use our Accounting business as an example. We run an Accounting business out of our home.

Let's say we hire a new employee this year and expand our business. Lets say we buy the employee the following things:
A desk for $450
An adding machine worth $50
A nice chair for $100 (not as nice as our Library bought...)
And a computer worth $1400.
Grand total spent is $2000.

Note when I buy these items I use money I have already paid income taxes on. I paid sales tax to The State of Indiana to the tune of 6% on each item as I bought it as well. So Personal Property taxes is a Triple Tax. It is the third tax I pay with this money...

Then I have to pay "Personal Property Tax" on each item to the Township I live in. This is a FOUR PAGE form that each business owner has to fill out once per year per Township. The tax rate is a sliding tax rate that you pay EVERY year that you use that asset in your business.

I of course also have to pay personal property taxes on all items I HAVE BOUGHT IN PREVIOUS years as well.

This is an absurd and silly tax that needs to be abolished.

I have a client that moved here from Texas. He runs a small, high technology company in Fort Wayne.

He is actually considering leaving Fort Wayne already. He has two business locations in two different Counties. Realize Texas does not have Personal Property Taxes or State or County Income Taxes. My client has to pay the following taxes in Indiana that he did NOT have to pay in Texas:
1. Indiana Income Tax
2. County Income Tax
3. Personal Property Taxes on all assets at location one.
4. Personal Property Taxes on all assets as the second location.

He is NOT happy.

He should not be happy.

What is EVEN MORE frustrating is the fact that our elected officials can give large Companies TAX ABATEMENTS so they do not have to pay some of these taxes.

Small Businesses cannot get these same tax abatements due to the costs associated with filing the forms...

We should abolish this tax.

Who thinks this is a good tax?