Travis Bunn

Founder, AppealDesk · Published March 27, 2026 · Updated August 25, 2026

Indiana's June 15 Deadline Depends on When Your County Mails Form 11. Your Escrow Account Runs on a Totally Different Clock.

Updated August 2026

Most states hand you one fixed date and let you count from there. Indiana does something trickier: your Form 130 appeal deadline depends on when your county actually mails your Form 11 Notice of Assessment. Under IC 6-1.1-15-1.1, if your Form 11 goes out before May 1, your deadline is June 15 of that same year, the date most homeowners assume applies. But if your county is running behind and mails it on or after May 1, your deadline does not shrink to some rushed 45-day scramble. It moves to June 15 of the year your county treasurer mails the tax bill built on that assessment, which is usually the following year. Assume the wrong version, and you either scramble unnecessarily or, worse, let a real deadline slip because you assumed you already had a full extra year.

Once you clear that first gate, Indiana keeps going. This is one of the deeper appeal ladders in this series: County Assessor, then the county-level Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals (PTABOA), then the Indiana Board of Tax Review, a state agency that is a genuinely different kind of body from PTABOA, and finally the Indiana Tax Court. A contested case can spend a year or more climbing that ladder. Meanwhile your mortgage servicer is running a completely separate clock, one set by federal escrow law, that pays the county every year based on whatever value is currently on the books, appeal or no appeal.

What "Over-Assessed" Actually Means in Indiana

Indiana keeps this part simpler than most states. Under IC 6-1.1-31, real property is assessed at 100% of its market value-in-use, called true tax value, with no fractional ratio standing between the assessor's number and what your tax rate applies to. If the county says your home is worth $200,000, $200,000 is what gets taxed, in full, this year. There is no capped or limited value quietly trailing behind to soften an overassessment the way some other states' two-tier systems do.

That directness cuts both ways during an appeal. Per DLGF guidance, your assessment is presumed equal to your true tax value until you rebut it with evidence, and the burden of proof shifts to the assessor only if your assessment rose more than 5% over the prior year, and only if that increase was not due to substantial renovations, new improvements, zoning changes, or a change in use. In other words, a routine year-over-year bump under 5% is yours to disprove; a big jump usually is not.

Four Levels, and the Middle Two Are Not the Same Kind of Body

Indiana's appeal path has four possible stops, and it is easy to assume the second and third are just "more of the same" when they are not:

1. County Assessor (Informal). File a Form 130 with your township or county assessor by your controlling June 15 deadline (IC 6-1.1-15-1.1). The assessor schedules an informal meeting to exchange evidence (IC 6-1.1-15-1.2) and reports the result to the county PTABOA. Many cases end here.
2. Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals (PTABOA). This is still county-level: a three or five member board appointed by your county commissioners and county council, with the county assessor sitting as a non-voting member. The PTABOA must hold a hearing no later than 180 days after your Form 130 filing date.
3. Indiana Board of Tax Review (IBTR). This is where the ladder changes character. The IBTR is a state agency in Indianapolis, not another county board, and it reviews the PTABOA's determination. File a Form 131 within 45 days of the PTABOA giving notice of its decision, under IC 6-1.1-15-3. The IBTR must hold a hearing within a year of a properly filed petition and issue its determination within 90 days of that hearing, extendable to 180 days.
4. Indiana Tax Court. If you are dissatisfied with the IBTR's final determination, you can petition the Tax Court for judicial review within 45 days of the IBTR's notice, under IC 6-1.1-15-5. From there, the only remaining stop is the Indiana Supreme Court.

Add up the built-in timelines and a case that goes the distance, a 180-day PTABOA hearing window, a year for an IBTR hearing, up to 180 more days for an IBTR determination, and 45-day filing windows at each handoff, can run well past two years from the original Form 11.

Meanwhile: The RESPA Clock That Doesn't Check Any County Docket

Federal law, not Indiana law, governs your escrow account. Under Regulation X, 12 CFR 1024.17(c)(3), your mortgage servicer must analyze your escrow account once per computation year, a twelve-month cycle set by your loan, not by your county or the IBTR's docket. That analysis looks at what the servicer actually paid the county and projects what it expects to pay next. It does not ask whether a Form 130 is pending at the assessor, a Form 131 is sitting at the IBTR, or a Tax Court petition was just filed. It simply pays whatever bill the county treasurer sends, built on whatever true tax value is currently on the assessment roll.

So if your Form 11 mailed late and pushed your own deadline out a year, and your case then spent another year or two climbing from PTABOA to the IBTR, your escrow account has likely already funded two, three, or more full tax cycles at the original, disputed true tax value before anything is resolved.

A worked example (hypothetical, not a real case)

Say a homeowner's property carries Indiana's median true tax value, $182,000, as of the January 1 assessment date. She expects her Form 11 in late April and a June 15 deadline like her neighbors. But her county's assessor is behind that year, and her Form 11 doesn't mail until May 22, three weeks past the April 30 cutoff. Under IC 6-1.1-15-1.1, that pushes her real filing deadline to June 15 of the following year, the year her tax bill built on this assessment actually mails, not this year's June 15.

She almost misses this in the other direction. In early June, seeing "June 15" on every county calendar she finds online, she assumes she's about to run out of time and nearly files a rushed, under-researched Form 130. A call to her township assessor clears it up: because her notice arrived late, she actually has another twelve months. She uses the extra time to pull comparable sales properly and files her Form 130 that October. The PTABOA schedules her hearing for the following March, within its 180-day window, and rules in her favor: an 8% reduction in true tax value.

• True tax value before appeal: $182,000. Annual tax at Indiana's 0.85% effective rate: roughly $1,547, or about $129/month if spread evenly through escrow. (Local rates vary; treat this as illustration, not a quote.)
• Escrow, year one: Pays the full $1,547 based on the original true tax value. Her Form 130 is filed but not yet decided.
• Escrow, year one analysis: No change. The analysis simply confirms the servicer paid what the county billed.
• PTABOA ruling, an 8% reduction: New true tax value roughly $167,440, new annual tax roughly $1,423, a savings of about $124 a year.
• Refund and go-forward adjustment: Only happens once the county corrects the roll, issues a new bill, and her servicer's next (or requested off-cycle) analysis catches it.

More than a full year of escrow disbursements at the original disputed value, for a case that resolved at the very first appeal level. If she had needed to escalate to the IBTR, that gap could easily have stretched past two years.

When the Win Finally Reaches Your Escrow Account

Whichever level finally rules in your favor, PTABOA, the IBTR, or the Tax Court, the mechanics from there are the same. The assessor corrects the roll, the county auditor and treasurer issue a corrected tax bill, and none of that touches your monthly payment on its own. Your servicer has to see it and act on it. Three federal rules in 12 CFR 1024.17 control what happens next:

• The surplus rule. If your next analysis shows a surplus of $50 or more, the servicer must refund it within 30 days, provided you are current on the loan (Section 1024.17(f)(2)(i) and (f)(2)(ii)).
• The cushion cap. Servicers can hold a cushion of no more than one-sixth of estimated annual disbursements, roughly two months' worth (Section 1024.17(c)(5)). A lower tax bill shrinks the allowed cushion too, which is often why a post-appeal refund runs bigger than the raw tax savings alone.
• The off-cycle option. A servicer is permitted, not required, to run an analysis outside its normal annual cycle (Section 1024.17(f)(1)(ii)). Send the county's corrected notice and new tax bill and ask; you lose nothing by asking, and the annual analysis will catch it either way.

If your case went all the way to the IBTR or Tax Court and took two years, do not assume anyone in your servicer's escrow department is tracking it. Nobody there is watching the IBTR's hearing calendar for you. The corrected bill from the county is the only document that moves your payment, so keep the ruling and the revised assessment and send both the moment they arrive.

The Date That Is Actually Yours to Check

PTABOA hearing dockets, the IBTR's one-year hearing window, Tax Court calendars, and your servicer's own Reg X computation year are all set by someone else, and none of them move faster because your escrow account is quietly overpaying. What is yours to check is the actual mailing date printed on your own Form 11, the single fact that decides whether your real deadline is this June 15 or next June 15.

Do not go by what "usually" happens in your county or what the calendar seems to say. Look at the date on your own notice, apply IC 6-1.1-15-1.1 to that specific date, and confirm with your assessor's office if anything looks off. Get that one fact wrong in either direction, too early or too late, and there is no PTABOA hearing, no IBTR petition, and no refund coming, because there was never a valid appeal filed for this year.

Key Counties

The highest-volume appeal jurisdictions in Indiana are Marion, Lake, Allen, Hamilton, and St. Joseph counties. Local filing procedures, whether a county accepts Form 130s online or requires paper filing, and how quickly a given PTABOA schedules hearings, all vary by county even though the statewide Form 11 timing rule and federal RESPA rules apply everywhere. Confirm procedure with your specific county assessor before you file.

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