IN THE NEWS

Analysis: Property tax changes to put more pressure on businesses, owners of low-value homes

Indiana Capital Chronicle 
November 17, 2025

Recent changes to Indiana’s property tax system will likely cut bills for most Hoosier homeowners, a new analysis has found.

But owners of pricey houses are expected to get bigger breaks, while those with low-valued dwellings may pay more, according to an Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute report released Friday.

Its author, Indiana tax expert Larry DeBoer, said Gov. Mike Braun’s hallmark tax law may squash growth in assessed value statewide through 2031, when key changes take full effect.

Chief among them is the homestead standard deduction, which Senate Enrolled Act 1 phases out by 2031. The fixed deduction lops $48,000 off the taxable value of a primary residence.

“If you’ve got a half-million-dollar house — you got a million-dollar house — $48,000 is nothing,” DeBoer said. “If you’ve got an $80,000 house, $48,000 is very significant.”

DeBoer, an emeritus agricultural economics professor at Purdue University, presented his results Friday at the Indiana Farm Bureau’s headquarters in Indianapolis.

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Report: 80% of eligible low-income children not served by state’s subsidized childcare programs

Indiana Capital Chronicle

June 2, 2026

Despite a new infusion of state money, subsidized childcare programs will be serving less than 20% of eligible Hoosier children by the end of 2026, according to an Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute analysis released Saturday.

“There are surely hundreds of thousands of Hoosier children who need childcare so that their parents can work that are not able to access this system,” the institute wrote.

The families of approximately 300,000 kids are at or below 135% of the federal poverty line — $43,980 for a family of four this year — and are eligible for childcare vouchers through a pair of state-administered programs: the Child Care and Development Fund and On My Way Pre-K.

Just 43,000 were enrolled as of February, according to the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, or 19% of those who are eligible. That doesn’t include children in the Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which aren’t directly run by the state, the institute noted.

Read more here.