INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Business property was undervalued in most of the 20 counties in which the state ordered last year’s assessments to be recalculated, figures released Thursday show.

Collectively, commercial and business property was undervalued by about $3.86 billion. That could mean that many homeowners in those counties will pay less in property taxes this year because the reassessments will shift more of the tax burden to those types of properties.

Any adjustments to last year’s bills based on the reassessments will be reflected in this year’s bills.

However, it is too early to determine what the precise impact of the reassessments will be because there are many variables in determining tax rates. And rates and budgets for this year’s bills have not yet been certified by the Department of Local Government Finance.

But Gov. Mitch Daniels said the reassessments could translate into “very significant reductions in tax rates” for some homeowners.

State officials ordered the reassessments because they suspected that commercial and/or industrial property was undervalued. They found in some cases that a significant portion of business property did not change in value between 1999 — the base year of the last reassessment — and 2005, the new base.

“The miss was very, very large in many of these counties,” Daniels said.

The figures showed that commercial property was undervalued by 30.1 percent in Marion County, the highest discrepancy among the 20 counties. Shelby County was next highest at 21.9 percent.

Collectively, industrial property was overvalued by about $136 million. Much of that was due to industrial property in Marion County being overvalued by about $207 million. But industrial property was still undervalued in most of the counties.

The counties ordered to do reassessments were Adams, Blackford, Crawford, Delaware, Fulton, Gibson, Jay, Jennings, Marion, Montgomery, Ohio, Parke, Pike, Posey, Ripley, Scott, Shelby, Sullivan, Switzerland and Warren. Results of the reassessment in Pike County are not yet available because of insufficient data.

Marion and Shelby counties also reassessed residential property.

Posted 2/29/2008