Indiana Commerce Connector land won't be taxed

By ANNIE GOELLER, Daily Journal of Johnson County staff writer

Property taxes that landowners and farmers pay on land in southern Johnson County will be lost if a toll road is built through six central Indiana counties.

The state would own the land where the proposed Indiana Commerce Connector would be built, meaning no property taxes would be collected there, said Gary Abell, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation.

If the lease is the same as the one for the Indiana Toll Road, the private company that would lease the beltway would not pay property taxes. The company also would not pay taxes on the tolls collected, he said.

Instead, the company would pay sales and excise taxes for equipment, such as for snowplows, he said.

Abell expects the leases would be similar, since the state is using the northern Indiana toll road lease as a basis for a future lease for the central Indiana tollway and because the governor has said the highway would be state-owned.

The state previously said that a private company would pay property taxes on the land the beltway would cover, but later said that information was incorrect.

"We don't want something out there that was incorrect," Abell said.

Local residents have been concerned about whether taxes would be paid on the land, since property taxes fund local services, such as schools, courts and having sheriff's deputies on the roads.

County council attorney Phil Wilson has estimated the county could lose thousands in property tax dollars if the road is built.

The state and county could make up that money through sales and excise taxes collected from the company, Abell said.

For example, the company that leases the northern Indiana toll road paid more than $800,000 in taxes on new snowplows this year.

The state would not have gained that tax money if the toll road were still publicly owned because the government would not have paid state and excise taxes on new equipment, Abell said.