CANNOT GIVE AWAY MONEY

QUEER CONDITION CONFRONTS COUNTY AUDITOR

Many Persons Entitled to Mortgage Exemptions Have Failed to Claim Them and $75,000 is Held Awaiting Claimants

Harry B. Smith, county auditor, is complaining because he can not give away $75,000.

That figure represents the amount that is due taxpayers under the mortgage exemption law, but which was collected in 1901 under the belief that the law was unconstitutional. Since that time, the Taxpayers Association, through its attorney, W. B. Schwartz, secured a mandate from the supreme court to compel the payment of the amounts due on mortgage exemptions.

“We are giving warrants for the payment of the amounts due those who come in,” said Mr. Smith, “but they are awfully slow about it. I can not understand what the reason is. To most of them, it means $13.”

Many of those who have claimed the money erroneously paid have applied it on the year’s taxes, so the county gets it anyway.

“Cannot Give Away Money,” The Indianapolis Sun (Indianapolis, Indiana), 20 August 1902, p. 1, col. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (http://www.newspaperarchive.com : accessed 27 March 2014).