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PartialGovernment Transparency

Establish a Property Tax Transparency Portal that lets taxpayers compare their current tax bill against potential changes under proposed tax rates.

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PartialFact-checker reviewConfidence: 65%

All four sources cited by the prior researcher are REAL and live; I re-fetched each. The campaign plank is verbatim on Braun's own agenda page ('Establish a Property Tax Transparency Portal that allows taxpayers to compare their current tax bill with potential changes under proposed tax rates'). The Indiana Senate Republicans' April 15, 2025 release confirms SB 1 'Creates a Property Tax Transparency Portal to allow taxpayers to compare their current tax bill with proposed tax rate changes,' and KSM's legislative update confirms the 2026 availability deadline. A tool named exactly 'Transparency Portal' is LIVE at gateway.ifionline.org/CalculatorsDLGF/TransparencyPortal.aspx, linked from DLGF's Indiana Taxpayer Portal, flagged 'To be used for tax bills in the pay 2026 cycle.' So Braun proposed it, made it his signature 2025 priority, drove it, and signed the law creating it — and a portal under that name shipped on time. HOWEVER, the prior FULL (+1.0) rating overstates delivery. I inspected the live tool directly across three fetches: it is an assessed-value tax ESTIMATOR (inputs: county, tax district, 1%/2%/3% assessed values, deduction and credit checkboxes; single 'Estimate This Bill' button). Its own 'About This Tool' text self-describes as a 'tax bill projection utility' built by DLGF with the Indiana Business Research Center — the same architecture as the legacy Tax Bill Estimator, relabeled and updated for pay-2026. Nothing on the page references proposed rates, rate comparison, SEA 1, or a taxpayer feedback mechanism. The promise's DEFINING capability — comparing your current bill against liability under a PROPOSED rate — is not demonstrably present. The prior rationale credited that capability to the Referendum Impact Calculator and Budget Notices, but those are separate legacy Gateway tools, not the promised portal's comparator. Applying the same standard I would to either party: a portal that exists by name and on time, created by legislation the politician authored and signed, but missing the promised comparison feature, is PARTIAL — not FULL. I stop at PARTIAL rather than anything lower because (a) the legislative deliverable fully landed and is his own initiative, and (b) two residual uncertainties cut toward leniency: the page also hosts a 'Tax Bill Lookup' section that could juxtapose an actual current bill with the projection after a postback my fetch tool cannot trigger, and a proposed-rate comparison could plausibly appear in the fall 2026 rate-setting cycle, which is after this review date (2026-07-21). Confidence is held at 0.65 for those two unverifiable branches.

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