Senator stands behind property owner tax break
Senator stands behind property owner tax break
By DOROTHY SCHNEIDER
Like many other home-owners in the Lafayette area, Matt and Kristy Gaskin say any savings they can get on property taxes are helpful.
"We love our house, but I don't have to tell you it's expensive as well," Matt Gaskin said. "We're working hard just to meet our financial commitments."
The Gaskins earned a $250 tax cut on their federal taxes last year by deducting what they paid in local and state property taxes, even though they did not itemize other deductions.
The deduction for non-itemizing taxpayers was put in place by a law U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh helped enact last year. The tax relief is set to expire at the end of 2009, but Bayh wants to see the deduction made permanent and the cap on how much homeowners can deduct lifted. He estimates it would cost $3.2 billion.
Bayh suggested the expense could be offset by cutting some of the $7 billion in earmarks requested by lawmakers, or covered by redirecting some of the funding that won't be needed in the Iraq war as troops begin to withdraw.
"We need to look at what our priorities are," he said. The law in place this year made it so thousands of Hoosier homeowners "didn't have to pay once to the local community and then pay Uncle Sam once again."