Published: October 24, 2009 09:40 pm      

Everyone has to pay their taxes

Thirteen million dollars is a lot of cash to be owed. That’s the amount local property owners have not paid Elkhart County for taxes on their land and buildings. That’s way too much.

About 3,200 property owners are delinquent on their taxes. The names of those people were published last week in The Goshen News as part of the legal process to sell the property in question. If the taxes are not paid the property will be put up for auction Nov. 30.

The number of properties listed for the tax sale is about triple the usual number. But the county did not hold tax sales in 2007 and 2008 because of the mess caused by late assessments.



This high rate of delinquency is harmful for all levels of government that depend on property tax revenue to function. School districts are an example. When property tax is not paid through the county, the deficit is not made up by someone with a big pot of money to dole out to local school boards. Instead school boards have to trim their expenditures, which impacts the services offered to our children.

The taxes owed date to 2006, 2007 and 2008. So it’s a headscratcher as to why the 2006 and 2007 taxes weren’t paid back then. The recession had not begun and local unemployment was low. Perhaps the delinquencies were an early warning of the economic chaos to come. We can understand how some property owners got behind in their taxes in 2008 and this year. The recession descended on our county like a nightmare and drove our unemployment rate to the highest in the nation. The jobless rate still stands at 15 percent.



Whatever the reason they are late, the taxes must be paid. Property owners should know they risk losing their property in the Nov. 30 auction.

This list is a sad chronicle of the financial problems some of our residents have been experiencing. But the reality is that everyone who owns property must pay their taxes. No matter how cold that may seem in this trouble time, that’s the only fair way our government can operate.