Office works to process property tax appeals

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Thousands of Hoosiers have appealed the Marion County property reassessment.  The outcome will affect how much residents pay in property taxes. 

Now the assessor’s office is working to process all those appeals. 

At the same time it is trying to catch up with a backlog of appeals that goes back to 2008. 

All 360,000 parcels in Marion County were reassessed this year.  For most property owners like Scott Berry of Irvington, the numbers changed.   

"It actually went down about $18,000 from what it had been assessed at before.  It went from $130,000 to $115,000 I believe," says Berry. 

A change in numbers means plenty of appeals.

"To date, we have coded into the system 3,822 appeals," says Marion County Assessor Joseph O'Connor. 

O'Connor says that's the number already put into the system.  Thousands more still need to be entered. 

"We're hoping that we can get all of them within weeks into the system.  Once we get them into the system and we can capture those email addresses we are going to be within weeks sending out notification about the appeal," he says. 

At the same time, the assessor’s office is dealing with a backlog of appeals that had been 32,000 dating back to 2006 and is now down to 27,000 dating to 2008. 

"Our goal is to get through ‘08, ‘09 and ‘10 in this 2013 calendar year," says O'Connor. 

O'Connor says if you just filed an appeal, his office will try and contact you within the next few weeks.  

"Anytime we capture an email address, we are going to send notification out saying we have received your appeal. We have assigned a case number and we will be signing an analyst to work through the appeal," he says. 

If possible, the appeals will be handled over the phone or through email.  If necessary, an in-person hearing will be scheduled. 

If you don't show up for the hearing the appeals process will be considered finished.  But you still have the option of filing an additional appeal with the Indiana Board of Tax Review within 45 days of notice of the hearing result.