He started it! Homeowner's challenge brought down Indiana's property-tax system.

• Author: Skertic, Mark
• Position: Focus - Joe Gomeztagle - Brief Article

Joe Gomeztagle isn't the kind of guy who will just go away quietly after being turned down.

When told questions about his tax bill weren't the state's problem, he demanded to know why. When he didn't get any answers, he got an attorney. When he found out legal challenges were going to drag on for years, he dug in his heels.

The result was a state Supreme Court decision that is forcing the state to rewrite the way it assesses property for taxation. Everyone who owns property in Indiana, from multinational companies to families living in mobile homes, will feel the impact of Gomeztagle's defiance.

Gomeztagle, 51, still owns the home in northwest Indiana that he had in the early 1990s when he first began to question whether the tax system was fair. He was soon convinced it wasn't.

Now that the courts have agreed, he's still not satisfied.

"I feel like we're on the 50-yard line and we still have a long way to go," he says. "The other 50 yards is going to be the rest of my life."

His passion is educating the public about property taxes. He has the opportunity to do that as the director of Operation TEN--Tax Education Now based at IU Northwest in Gary.

Indiana is undergoing the most massive tax reform in a generation. Gomeztagle and other homeowners from the town of St. John brought a class-action lawsuit arguing that the assessment system used in Indiana was too subjective. Homes were being assessed too low in some communities, shifting more tax burden onto other homeowners and businesses.

The Indiana Supreme Court agreed, in decisions that came in 1996 and 1998. The courts found the assessment system was not based on an objective system. Lawmakers were left looking for a solution.

Studies and proposals have followed. Some legislators and home-owners have argued that suddenly shifting to a system where all property assessment is based on fair market value would mean too big a burden to some homeowners. Some would find their tax bills jumping 40 percent or more. Expected by some experts to be among the hardest hit are those living in older homes in established neighborhoods.

Seeing this as an opportunity to make sweeping changes in the tax code, Gov. Frank O'Bannon and Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan have proposed a range of tax reforms. They are pushing increases in the sales and income taxes, adjustments in the property tax system and the elimination of some costs placed on business and industry.

Gomeztagle doesn't like it. Fix the property tax assessment...