This year, my tax bill went up pretty significantly. Did City Council l raise taxes?
Actually, no. The City of Carmel tax rate payable in 2021 is 0.7877 per $100 of net assessed value, same as for taxes payable in 2020.
The reason your tax bill went up is because your property value has gone up … and continues to rise because Carmel is a community where people want to live, which means there is a high demand for housing, which means all property values are increasing.
The reason your tax bill went up is because your property value has gone up…
But you’re not alone. Most property owners in Hamilton County saw their assessed property values go up in 2021. According to the Hamilton County Assessor’s office, assessed values in the county increased more than 6.5 percent, which had a direct impact on the tax bills received by county residents in Carmel, Fishers, Westfield, Noblesville and throughout the county.
The Current in Carmel did a nice job of telling this story. The process of assessing property values includes a look at home sales in each neighborhood during the previous year to assess values for the neighborhood as a whole. The annual review is a market-driven process and county officials say it has been quite difficult to keep up with the hot real estate market.
In that May story, F.C. Tucker Co., said the average sale price for a Carmel home in April of 2021 was $507,671, an increase of 22.3 percent compared to April 2020. Homes sold nearly 60 percent faster last month than a year ago. The assessed value of residential properties in Carmel grew 6.45 percent in the last year, with commercial assessments rising 1.95 percent.
We are all paying a higher tax bill, but it’s not because tax rates are rising.
Authored by Laura Campbell, Sue Finkam, Kevin Rider, Jeff Worrell, Sue Finkam, Bruce Kimball, Miles Nelson, Anthony Green and Adam Aasen.