Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1908 — PRACTICAL TAX TALK TUESDAY [ARTICLE]

PRACTICAL TAX TALK TUESDAY

State Tax Commissioner Wingate Makes Road Clear for Assessors, * Prosecutors and Treasurer. You must pay your taxes. If you have been guilty of evasions heretofore you must now toe the mark and get square with the county. You must give in all your property to the assessor and the assessor must fix a fair valuation on the property without any regard to your own idea of what it should be assessed at. You must not put the assessor off when he calls on you. The law says yon shall forthwith answer his questions and you have no right to put him off. If you have a dog upon which you have not paid the taxes, no matter when you got the dog, and no matter how many people have previously paid the tax on the dog, you must pay pie tax again. If you had money in the Remington Bank that was not returned to the assessor, you will be asked by the assessor to report it, and if you fail to do it, Jhe county assessor will place it on the duplicate. If you are an assessor and you do not do your duty and see that all property is assessed, you should resign or be deposed. If you do not furnish all information he requests about yjour property or if you deceive him your case should be turned over to the prosecuting attorney. . Tn the presence of the county assessor, the county treasurer, the county auditor, the deputy prosecuting attorney, many of the'township assessors, and- a few other citizens, Including the newspaper publishers, State Tax Commissioner John C. Wingate, gave a practical tax talk Tuesday in the county assessor’s ofc fice, and the introductory paragraphs of this article are suggested by his lecture. He was very anxious thatthe newspaper reporters should be on hand to hear what he had to say, in order that they might give his talk the widest possible circulation. He invited criticism from their viewpoint, and said if the newspapers could find anything in his talk that was not calculated to fulfill the letter of the tax law he wanted to learn about it and would ask the newspapers to set him right. | Mr. Wingate explained that there were three, reasons why taxes were high. The first was the increased appropriations for the state charitable institutions, and for the building of school houses, macadam roads, vast drainage systems and for bridges and sidewalks. This reason was a legitimate? one. The other reasons were the failure of assessors to list all property, and the failure of officers to collect it after it was placed on the duplicate. He could not justify these two reasons, and said /hey should not exist He was going to do all in his power to prevent causes of this kind in the future, and admitted that as a tax commissioner he had been negligent in the past The failure to get property listed was the fault of the assessors and the failure th collect it was the fault of the treasurers, and that the present tax law provided for no evasions and left the officers no alternative but to list all property and to collect it without fear or favor. He had secured the figures of the delinquent tax returned in Jasper county and expressed the greatest satisfaction that it had been more than two-thirds collected. He said this showed that the treasurer was doing his duty and that this was one of the very best records made in Indiana, and that wherever he went in the future he would quote the figures as showing what a conscientious officer could do. One thing about the dog tax that «jgy he new and yet that every assessor apd every dog owner should know is that whenever a pup becbmes three months old, no matter at what time es the year it is, its owner must hunt up the trustee and pay the tax, and if a man gets a dog either by purchase or otherwise he must at once pay the tax upon it, no matter if its previous owner had paid the tax,and if he pays the tax and the next day sells the dog its new owner must again pay the tax, and if the dog has a new owner every day of , the year each new owner must pay the tax Stray dogs may be shot, and should be. • ' His statement in the meeting about the depositors in the Remington Bank who had not returned the money on deposit for assessment, was made to Assessor Lewis before the mtfb* tw open* IIWMt

that he was to get a list of the depositors and to see if the money they had on deposit was returned and If not Ke was to give the parties an opportunity to voluntarily place it on labt year’s duplicate and if they refused he was then to place it thereon himself and the treasurer was to enforce collection. Acting on this Instruction Mr. Lewis is now, planning to notify each depositor who so evaded the law that he must pay taxes on that deposit. His talk was very practical and should have a splendid bearing on the work of assessors the coming season, and should make the work easier for them. ■ If you want to be on the safe and honest side, you should list all your property and pay taxes on all of it Don’t grumble, it is a part of our system of government and our schbols and our courts and our roads and our libraries and our sidewalks, and our charibtale institutions are our reward. List all your property. Pay your taxes. And don’t forget the dog.