The May 15 business personal property (BPP) deadline has come and gone, and a strange pattern is showing up in the returns: businesses that made significant equipment investments in 2025 are reporting higher assessed values for 2026 than they did last year — under a law that was passed as a tax cut. As tax firm Baden Tax Management put it: "A tax law change designed to reduce taxes is going to increase what most filers owe."
That is not a drafting error. It is arithmetic — and if you filed without modeling it, the amendment window is still open.
We have covered the two headline changes separately: the removal of the 30% depreciation floor and the $2 million exemption threshold. This post is about what actually happened when those changes hit the 2026 filing season — the paradox in the floor math, the shutdown of the state's online filing portal, and what to do now that May 15 is behind us.
The Floor Was an Aggregate Test — That's the Whole Trick
Under the long-standing rule in 50 IAC 4.2-4-9, the 30% minimum valuation limitation was not applied asset by asset. Per the DLGF's memo on the 2025 legislation, the total valuation of a taxpayer's assessable depreciable personal property in a single taxing district could not be less than 30% of the adjusted cost of all such property in that district. One test, one pool of costs, one pool of values.
That aggregate structure quietly protected equipment-heavy businesses for years. Indiana values BPP through depreciation pools, and under 50 IAC 4.2-4-7, brand-new assets carry first-year true tax value percentages of 40% to 65% of cost — well above the floor. Old assets, meanwhile, bottom out at 5% to 20% depending on the pool. When both sat in one aggregate test, the new equipment's excess above 30% offset the old equipment's shortfall below it. Steady capital investment could keep the blended percentage above 30% and the floor never triggered.
Then SEA 1 (Section 11) created Indiana Code 6-1.1-3-29, retroactive to January 1, 2025: the 30% floor now applies only to property placed in service on or before January 1, 2025. Assets placed in service after that date are outside the floor entirely — and outside the floor calculation. The 2026 Form 103-Long reflects this with a new Schedule A-2 for property not subject to the limitation.
A worked example
Consider a manufacturer in one taxing district with an aging plant and a new line installed in mid-2025:
| Component | Adjusted cost | Pooled true tax value |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-2025 equipment (older, deeply depreciated) | $10,000,000 | $1,500,000 (15%) |
| New line placed in service 2025 (Pool 2, year 1 = 40%) | $5,000,000 | $2,000,000 |
Under the old aggregate floor: combined value of $3.5M is tested against 30% of $15M = $4.5M. The floor binds; assessed value is $4,500,000.
Under the 2026 rules: the floor is tested against pre-2025 property only. The old base is pulled up from $1.5M to 30% of $10M = $3,000,000, and the new line reports its full $2,000,000 on Schedule A-2 with no floor. Total: $5,000,000.
The "tax cut" added $500,000 of assessed value. The new assets gained nothing from the floor exemption — at 40% of cost they were never near the floor anyway — while the old assets lost the shield the new ones used to provide. Baden's assessment matches this math: most taxpayers with meaningful post-2025 capital investment "will see assessments go up, not down."
Warning
Two carve-outs make this worse for some filers. Post-2025 property located in a tax increment allocation area whose base assessed value was set before January 1, 2025 remains subject to the floor — no Schedule A-2 relief at all. And the 2026 legislature's HB 1406 restored the floor for light, heat, and power utility companies, retroactive to property placed in service after January 1, 2025, per KSM's 2026 legislative update.
Who Actually Wins and Loses
| Profile | 2026 outcome |
|---|---|
| Total BPP under $2M in the county | Exempt — but only if the exemption was claimed (see below) |
| Old asset base, no recent capex | Roughly unchanged; the floor still applies to pre-2025 property |
| Heavy 2025 capex plus a depreciated older base | Assessment can rise — the aggregate shield is gone |
| Sustained post-2025 investment, looking years out | The real winners — new assets will eventually depreciate below 30% with no floor to stop them |
The genuine relief in the floor removal is back-loaded: it pays off as post-2025 assets age past the point where pool percentages fall below 30%. In year one, it mostly took something away.
PPOP-IN Is Gone — Filing Went Back to the Counties
The other 2026 filing-season surprise was procedural. HEA 1427 (Sections 13, 15, and 16) discontinued the Personal Property Online Portal (PPOP-IN) effective January 1, 2026, repealing the statute that required it. No filings are accepted through the portal after 2025.
Note
The DLGF has said it plans to keep PPOP-IN accessible so taxpayers can retrieve historical filings — useful if you need prior-year returns for an amendment or appeal — but it is a read-only archive now, not a filing channel.
Indiana's BPP system is self-assessment, so with the portal gone, returns went back to being filed directly with each county assessor, county by county, with forms available from the DLGF and county websites. Multi-county filers who had consolidated everything through one state portal had to track each county's preferred submission method. If you are unsure whether a county actually received your return, confirm now — not when a Form 113/PP assessor-initiated assessment shows up.
The $2M Exemption Was Never Automatic
The threshold jump removed most small operators from the tax rolls, as we detailed for Indianapolis small businesses. But the exemption must be declared. Hamilton County's guidance is representative: the taxpayer must claim it on Form 102 or 103; only a taxpayer who "filed the return and claimed the exemption in a previous year and continues to qualify" is excused from re-filing. A business that was over the old $80,000 threshold — and therefore never claimed the under-threshold exemption before — needed to file a 2026 return to claim it. As Baden puts it: no filing, no exemption. Remember also that the test aggregates all of your locations within a county.
Missed Something? The Amendment Window Is Open
Under IC 6-1.1-3-7.5, a taxpayer who filed a timely original return may file an amended return within twelve months of the original filing date. Two details matter right now:
- Amend within six months of filing and any resulting credit or refund comes through in full.
- Amend after six months but within twelve, and the credit or refund is reduced by 10%.
Tip
If you filed by May 15, 2026, you are inside the six-month window until mid-November. That is the time to re-run the Schedule A / A-2 split, check whether the floor was applied to post-2025 assets that should have been exempt from it, and confirm the $2M exemption was claimed everywhere it applies.
Common errors worth re-checking: post-2025 assets left on Schedule A (subjecting them to a floor they are exempt from), TIF-area property misclassified in either direction, exemption claims missed in secondary counties, and pool or life-class assignments that overstate true tax value.
Where AribaTax Fits
The floor paradox is a taxing-district-level calculation, which means the same equipment mix produces different outcomes depending on where it sits — and whether the district overlaps a pre-2025 TIF allocation area. Our Indiana property explorer surfaces parcel-level assessment data across all 92 counties, and our property lookup tool pulls assessed values and classifications together in one place. If a review of your 2026 filing suggests the numbers came out wrong — on the real property side or against comparable operations — our tax appeal service builds the evidence package and handles the filing.