Sec. 135-225. - Mandatory electronic filing and certification process.
(a) Findings. The city-county council finds that:
(1) State law requires that sales disclosure forms be filed with counties for transfers of real property.
(2) Marion County is a large metropolitan county with over three hundred thousand (300,000) parcels of real property, tens of thousands of which are sold every year.
(3) Especially given the volume of filings, the current system for filing sales disclosure forms is inefficient and costly to the government, in part because the forms are not filed electronically with the county in the first instance and are processed in paper form by multiple offices of local government. These offices are funded largely from property taxes levied by the county.
(4) Many of those parcels sold every year are properties that contain abandoned and/or blighted structures that do not produce amounts of property tax revenue sufficient to sustain their burden on the systems of local government, including the system of processing sales disclosure forms when those properties are sold.
(5) According to a September 2004 report issues by the city's abandoned houses work group, entitled "Reclaiming Abandoned Properties in Indianapolis," among other sales of abandoned and underperforming houses, speculators frequently purchase abandoned houses without the intent or means to renovate or improve them.
(6) Thus, both the total volume of real property sales and the high number of abandoned homes that produce little or no property tax revenue impose significant burdens on the property tax funded system for processing sales disclosure forms.
(7) Technology is available to allow for much greater efficiency in the filing of sales disclosure forms and in the transmitting of the required information to the state.
(b) Required electronic filing. Effective July 1, 2006, the county auditor is authorized to mandate that all sales disclosure forms filed with the county auditor must be filed electronically using a certified program. A program shall be approved and certified by the county auditor and shall be available for certification only after receipt of written approval from the county assessor. The written approval by the county assessor shall be in a form determined by the county auditor. The effective date of the certification shall be the date of acceptance of the approval from the county assessor and the approval by the county auditor. The program shall be certified for a period of five (5) years after the date of certification.
(c) Revocation of certification. If after certification, a program is determined to be deficient by the county auditor, the county auditor shall notify the certified provider (the "certified provider") of the program in writing of such deficiencies and the certified provider shall have ten (10) days to correct such deficiencies. If all deficiencies listed are not corrected within such ten-day period, the county auditor may, in writing, revoke the certification. In order for the program to be re-certified, it must meet all of the requirements for the initial certification.
(d) Modification to program. If modifications are made to a program that, in the opinion of the county auditor are major modifications to the program, the county auditor may, by written notice to the certified provider, require the modified program to meet the requirements for the initial certification prior to being approved for usage.
(e) Fees. The certified provider shall charge a transaction fee of twenty dollars ($20.00) per usage of the program. The transaction fee shall be charged directly to the user by the certified provider, as determined by the county auditor. For every usage of the program for which the certified provider charges a transaction fee, the certified provider shall submit to the city controller a ten dollar ($10.00) portion of transaction fee. The city controller shall prescribe the method and timing of submitting those transaction fee revenues, and shall provide for the deposit of all transaction fee revenues received into the housing trust fund established pursuant to IC 36-7-15.1-35.5. The certified provider may retain the balance of the transaction fee, In addition, the county auditor may authorize the certified provider to accept sales disclosure form filing fees otherwise required by law (either directly or through the office of the county auditor) and submit the filing fees to the county auditor, as determined by the county auditor. This fee increase shall be retroactive to July 1, 2021.
(f) Assistance to walk-in filers. If the county auditor elects to mandate electronic filing under subsection (a), the county auditor shall establish a system to assist persons deemed unable to comply with such mandatory electronic filing.
(G.O. 67, 2006, § 1; G.O. 44, 2009, § 2; G.O. 28, 2021, § 1)
