Mobile assessor’s office helps Indiana county drive down tax appeals

Key Takeaways

Amid shifting property tax policy and high rates of foreclosure in Indiana, the Fulton County Assessor’s Office established a mobile office, which provides education on property valuations, property tax exemptions and the tax billing breakdown. Since its launch, the number of tax appeals filed in the county are down by half, according to Fulton County Assessor Kasey Lee. 

Fulton County is known for its lakes, where many residents have second homes, noted Lee. That, in addition to many residents working outside of the county, led to a gap where large swaths of the population couldn’t come into the office during work hours to learn more about the process and ask questions, resulting in higher rates of tax appeals. 

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Fulton County earned the 2025 “Best in Category” award for Civic Education and Public Information for its mobile assessor’s office initiative.

“We’re an ag county, so we’re very rural, we don’t have a lot of industry,” Lee said. “We have plenty of people that leave [the county] to go to work, so the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. [Assessor’s Office hours], I was finding was just not a good fit, so my office decided to take it upon ourselves to offer them something a little unique.”

The mobile office offers after-hours and weekend support in five locations across the county. Lee also hosts a “County Hall” to provide education on the entire cycle of tax valuation to payment and any recent changes to the process. Most questions are about market factors, according to Lee.

“I break down the whys, the what’s and the where’s of everything from the tax valuation to the tax rate changes,” Lee said. “Indiana is currently undergoing a massive property tax rehabilitation, where they’re eventually going to try to do away with our property taxes, so the changing landscape of deductions and credits and cost table changes — we’re covering it all.”

For the 2025 assessment year, Indiana increased the residential cost per square foot significantly. Lee said her home went up $90,000, while others, particularly the lakefront properties, were raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

“And we didn’t even reassess them, that was just those changes [at the state level],” Lee said. “So last year, we had such an insane influx of people asking questions.”

Creating the mobile office allowed the Assessor’s Office to meet demand, providing more homeowners with one-on-one support, Lee said. 

“We sit and individually break down everything that’s on their property,” Lee said. “We look at the ‘before,’ we look at the ‘current,’ we see what changes happen. We dive in. They’ve gotten to the point they bring photos [of their home], so we can see interior pictures.”

Bill Hewitt, president of a lake association in Fulton County, said the mobile office has “absolutely” made the property tax process easier and he’s seen the benefit firsthand in his community. 

Before the mobile office, property taxes were “real confusing,” Hewitt said. “Third-party vendors assessed them too much in most cases, because they didn’t understand the situation of the home — what it was made out of, when it was added to, that sort of thing — so, Kasey has helped a lot of people around here … get their taxes straightened around.”

Lee said increasing community education has helped ease taxpayers’ frustration with the process. 

“It’s a huge ball of wax that we’ve taken on, but we love it,” Lee said. “We love being able to educate them. They come in hot and they’re very upset, but when people leave, they might not like it, but they don’t feel like they’ve been singled out, they’re understanding the process better. 

“So, even as things progressively get higher, they’re not as angry. They want to know what changed, but they come at it with a more level head than the aggressive nature that we’ve seen in the past.”

The Assessor’s Office hasn’t hired additional staff for the extended hours, but established a wider scheduling structure, so a staff member might work four hours in the evening instead of four hours in the morning, Lee said. 

“If there’s more people that go past those times, then I stay until they’re done,” Lee said. “So, nobody gets turned away.”

In February, Indiana reported the highest foreclosure filing rate in the country. 

“We’re at the stage where almost everything that is residential, commercial or ag has gone up almost 40% in the last two years,” Lee said. “… So, we’re really trying to work hard to keep these people in their homes. 

“Even though we have to follow the state guidelines, we try to really look and dive into everything, and as long as we stay equal with all the situations, we try to make concessions for our constituents here to help them keep their home and keep a decent tax bill as best we can.”

New Indiana legislation is set to provide significant property tax relief by expanding the homestead deduction, introducing a 10% homestead tax credit (capped at $300) and phasing in new deductions for rental properties. 

The Assessor’s Office offers the ability to file for any exemptions a homeowner qualifies for, even though it doesn’t traditionally fall under its purview, and automatically starts the paperwork process to file a homestead when someone builds a new home, Lee noted. 

“We found that when people build a home, they don’t remember that they have to file their homestead and then they have a horribly shocking tax bill, so we start that process for them,” Lee said. “… We’re trying to be as open and transparent and helpful as we possibly can when we do these mobile offices.”

Prior to the creation of the mobile office, tax appeals in Fulton County surpassed 100 a year, with 20 or more going to the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals for resolution. In 2024, zero appeals went to the board. The appeal process can be “very long and drawn out,” so cutting that down is beneficial for everyone, Lee noted. Fulton County is the only Assessor’s Office in the state to hold Saturday and evening hours for the public. 

“We progressively are at a stage where our board is only hearing appeals that do not actually have to do with the rise in valuation, it typically just has to do with an actual status change that we ourselves can’t make,” Lee said. “That’s huge, because my fellow counties around us have 60-plus appeals going to boards, so the education — the knowledge of how things work and how we evaluate things — is really paying off in the end.”