One of the quieter provisions of Indiana's SB 1 reform was a mandate: the Department of Local Government Finance (DLGF) must launch a statewide property tax transparency portal by January 1, 2026. It did. Most Hoosiers still haven't heard about it, let alone used it. Four months in, the portal is the single best free tool you have to audit the 2026 bill landing in your mailbox — before you send the May 10 check.
Here's what it shows, a 4-step audit any homeowner can run in ten minutes, and where the portal's data stops being useful (the part your appeal actually needs).
What the portal is
The transparency portal sits on DLGF's domain. It pulls from the same Gateway and certified-rate data the state uses internally to generate tax bills, and it exposes it at the parcel level for anyone. No login, no fee. You enter a county and a parcel number (or an address in most counties) and get back:
- Your gross assessed value — land, improvements, and total
- Your deductions applied — homestead, supplemental, over-65, veteran, geothermal, etc.
- Your taxing district's components — county, township, school corporation, library, fire protection, solid waste, special assessments
- Your rate per $100 of AV — the one that ends up on your bill
- Your circuit-breaker credit — calculated automatically based on the 1%/2%/3% caps
- Year-over-year comparisons — 2025 vs. 2026 side by side
That last piece is the new capability. Prior to the portal, reconciling a 2026 bill against a 2025 bill required digging through two separate county websites, two different PDF formats, and a spreadsheet. Now it's one search.
The 4-step audit
1. Confirm your parcel identity and AV match Form 11
Pull up your 2026 Form 11 assessment notice (mailed in March or early April). Enter the same parcel number into the portal. Verify:
- Parcel ID matches — mistypes happen; your bill is wrong if it's on the wrong parcel.
- Land + improvements AV matches Form 11 exactly. If the portal shows a different total, one of the two is wrong, and you want to know which before you pay.
- Property class matches — "residential" vs. "commercial" vs. "agricultural" determines which cap applies (1%/2%/3%).
If any field differs, open a ticket with your county assessor that day. Don't wait.
2. Compare your rate to the district median
Click into the "taxing district" breakdown. Your rate is the sum of about 8–12 component levies (county, township, school, library, fire, etc.). The portal lets you see the same breakdown for every parcel in the same district — they should all match. If yours doesn't:
- Either you're in a different district than you think (possible if you're near a boundary)
- Or an error slipped into your record
The district median is also useful context: if your rate is meaningfully higher than your neighbors' rates across the same school corporation, you may have the wrong special assessments attached (conservancy district, drainage, urban service).
3. Check that your circuit-breaker credit is applied
Indiana's circuit breaker caps limit homestead taxes to 1% of AV, non-homestead residential and agricultural to 2%, and other to 3%. The credit is automatic — but "automatic" means "automatic assuming the system knows you qualify." The portal shows:
- Applied cap (1%, 2%, or 3%)
- Pre-credit tax (rate × AV)
- Post-credit tax (what you actually owe)
If your property is owner-occupied but the portal shows the 2% or 3% cap, your homestead deduction isn't registered. That's a filing fix at the assessor's office — you probably already qualified, you just need the form. The fix is worth real money: for a $300K home, the difference between the 1% and 2% cap is $3,000 a year.
4. Verify homestead, supplemental, and over-65 deductions
The deductions section of the portal lists every deduction applied to your parcel. What should be there for most Indiana homeowners:
- Standard deduction — on any residence
- Supplemental homestead deduction — automatic if you have the standard deduction; SB 1 raised it to 40% of remaining AV for 2026, stepping up to 66.7% by 2031
- Over-65 deduction + $150 credit — if the owner is 65+, income qualifies, and the deduction is filed
- Mortgage deduction — deprecated in 2023 but still visible for older tax years
Missing deduction = missing savings. Every missing deduction is a filing fix, not an appeal — file the application with the county and it takes effect the next cycle.
Red flags that suggest you have an appeal case
The portal won't tell you "your assessment is too high." It tells you whether the mechanics of the bill are calculating correctly. For the "is the assessment itself wrong?" question, compare the portal data against your own knowledge:
- Unexplained AV jump. Year-over-year AV rose 15%+ without a renovation, new construction, or township reassessment cycle? That's appeal-grade.
- Rate is normal but AV is 10%+ higher than neighbors' on similar homes. Uniformity case.
- Classification mismatch. "Commercial" on what you use as primary residence, "residential" on rental property — either direction creates exposure.
- Wrong district. If the portal shows you in a different taxing district than your neighbors across the street, confirm municipal boundaries.
If any of those apply, pair the portal data with a comparable-sales analysis — our free property check runs both.
From portal to appeal
When you appeal with Form 130, the PTABOA expects evidence. Portal output is part of that evidence:
- Print or screenshot your parcel's portal page — it's the official state record of the assessment and rate at a point in time.
- Print comparable neighbor pages for uniformity appeals — the portal lets you pull them by parcel without a public records request.
- Attach to your evidence packet alongside your comparable sales analysis and any condition photos.
The portal data is unimpeachable — the county can't contest it because it's the DLGF's own record of what the county reported. It frees you to focus your appeal on the valuation question, not the data question.
What the portal doesn't tell you
One big limitation: the portal shows what the county says, not what the market says. It doesn't have comparable sales prices, it doesn't have MLS data, it doesn't have automated valuation models. The market-value-in-use side of your appeal still requires external data.
That's the AribaTax half: we pull comparable sales for every Indiana parcel, normalize them against property characteristics, and compute the gap between your portal AV and your likely fair market value. The portal tells you how the county computed your bill; we tell you whether the underlying value is right.
Bottom line
If you haven't visited the transparency portal yet, spend ten minutes there before the May 10 installment hits. Four quick checks — parcel match, rate comparison, circuit-breaker credit, deductions — catch the most common billing errors. If everything lines up and your AV still looks high, the appeal conversation starts from there.