By GARRETT BERGQUIST
WISH TV | www.wunschtv.com

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick said Thursday her tax plan will ensure everyone gets some kind of relief without jeopardizing local revenues.

McCormick

McCormick is the last of the three gubernatorial candidates on the November ballot to unveil a property tax plan, coming nearly three weeks after Republican Mike Braun unveiled his plan and about a month and a half after Libertarian candidate Donald Rainwater unveiled his plan.

McCormick’s plan calls for capping annual property tax increases at 10 percent, increasing the maximum property tax deduction for homeowners from $2,500 to $3,500, and expanding deductions for seniors and disabled veterans.

The plan includes several unsuccessful proposals filed by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers during the 2024 legislative session. McCormick says she did this on purpose because the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency has already provided estimates of the cost to state revenue for each of those proposals, making it easier to assess the economic impact of her plan. She says based on the LSA’s estimates, her plan would cost the state $600 million in lost revenue. In addition, she said she wanted a plan that had bipartisan support.

“I think we often avoid giving credit to people on the other side of the aisle when we’re running a political campaign,” she said. “If you have good ideas, we should be ashamed if we don’t use them.”

McCormick says she deliberately structured her tax plan so that the bulk of the $600 million cost would fall on the state, not local governments. Her campaign team estimates that about $175 million of those losses would be distributed among state local governments. She said that contrasts with Braun’s plan, which she has called a threat to local services. McCormick says the state could easily recoup the losses by resetting spending priorities elsewhere, such as reinvesting education voucher funds in traditional public schools.

Justin Ross, a professor of public finance at the Indiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, said that’s well within the power of lawmakers. He says McCormick, Braun and Rainwater’s plans represent three different approaches to the same goal of reducing the property tax burden. Ross says the main difference is that Braun and Rainwater’s plans focus more on limiting local governments’ property tax authority, while McCormick’s plans turn more of that into a budget line item.

Ross says regardless of who wins the election, it is taxpayers’ responsibility to take advantage of any new tax breaks offered.

Braun’s campaign team dismissed McCormick’s proposal in a brief statement as a tax and spending plan.

“Democrat Jennifer McCormick is a liberal proponent of tax and spend policies, and her plan does nothing to ease the property tax pain felt by Indiana residents due to the inflation crisis created by McCormick-backed Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Braun said. “My bold property tax plan will provide immediate property tax relief to Indiana homeowners by resetting bills to 2021 pre-Biden/Harris inflation levels.”

This story was originally published by WISH-TV at Wishtv.com/news/democratic-governor-candidate-jennifer-mccormick-pushes-property-tax-caps-larger-deductions.