August 30th, 2007 by thepolis

Sheriffs and Constables: The United Bounty Hunters of Indiana

Hat Tip to Advance Indiana for its piece today on County Sheriffs’ cuts of unpaid tax collections. According to the piece, County Sheriffs get to pocket 10% of unpaid taxes they collect. Similarly, constables pocket 1% of the worth of the documents they serve.

This system is terribly antiquated and must be reformed. Public servants should not earn a commission for doing what is required of them by law. This may have been necessary in Indiana’s primarily agrarian past, but not in 2007. Given the property tax crisis, imagine the tax relief we would see if this pocketed cash was still in government coffers.

Which begs the question, how much did Frank Anderson pocket from unpaid taxes?

Posted in Economics, Property Taxes |

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Economics, Property Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Sheriffs and Constables: The United Bounty Hunters of Indiana”

  1. joelharris Says:
    August 30th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    I seem to recall this coming up before, so I did a search of the Indy Star. Sorry I can’t link to it (the content is expired–I got to it via newsbank.com via the IMCPL website). Here is a quote from a Star Editorial on February 24, 2007:

    Marion County Sheriff Frank Anderson raked in nearly $268,000 in tax collection fees in 2005, on top of his salary of about $100,000. He scooped up another $175,414 in collection fees last year.

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