The scene where the tax man comes to the house for the "Indiana Personal Property Tax" assessment is disturbing. Is there really such a thing, or did there used to be? Anyone from Indiana care to explain this?
Once a loyal fan, always a loyal fan
Yes, no.
shareI remember this happening when I was a child in Michigan. EVERYONE hid things from the Tax Assessor - it was a horrible, corrupt system to steal more money from tax payers.
Marko
Property tax in some states used to apply to everything you purchased that year. Anything new you purchased, you were to write down and keep record of...the assessors would come at random to determine if people were lying on their form or not if your purchases seemed excessively low. (kind of like an audit) You couldn't deny them entry, and you couldn't refuse to allow them to look somewhere. They could go through your cupboard or even your underwear drawer. From what I was told by my grandparents, most of the time they'd walk around the house and peek in a closet or two, but some of them took it personally, and would completely turn your house upside down to prove you bought something expensive. Some older homes have false panel pantries installed that were either used during prohibition to hide alcohol or during the tax assessments to hide valuable new property.
I'm pretty sure this all ended in the 60s when automatic sales tax was introduced. Oddly enough, I find little mention of personal property assessment on Google, but I grew up hearing stories about it from my family.
Interestingly enough, Indiana now believes that its sneaky residents are once again shorting the state of their share of revenue by purchasing things online (from other states) and not adding the sales tax to their end-of-year tax payments. Legally, if you buy something online, and don't pay Indiana state taxes for it, and the store didn't collect its own local taxes, Indiana feels that it's entitled to that money. The days of personal property assessors may return once more!
*__*
This really sounds like something the Romans did in Biblical times - they'd tax everything and anything, including pots, bowls, etc. - as said, it was likely corrupt through and through (as it was in Roman times)...
Even so, the film got a lot of humor out of this intrusive tax. The tax collector using the children to betray what was new and the parents drilling their children about how to answer the tax man. It was really quit funny. Sometimes the best humor comes out of bad situations.
shareOy. I'll never complain about sales tax again. I don't know why sales taxes weren't thought of sooner-- much less wasteful than having to send out people to examine your house with a fine-toothed comb every year, just to milk a few more measly dollars out of you.
share[deleted]
I don't know about Indiana, but I used to pay the Maryland personal property tax when I worked for a mortgage company. It was not your regular real estate assessment, but was for vacation homes. In my case, people had vacation homes at the ocean.
shareSome states like WV you have to pay a tax on your car... boat... motorcycle... etc... each year... keep on paying. Not fair.
shareA lot of taxes aren't fair. Politicians have discovered that they can purchase votes by spending tax money to benefit various individuals in various ways. This calls for ever-increasing tax assessments. These benefits rarely have anything to do with the public good.
shareSurely was an odd scene. The auditor should show up unannounced, as it was odd how they were loading up trailers and trucks with possessions.
share