Indiana taxes nothing on the deed, and its charging-order statute stops three subsections short of what people assume

Indiana Charges No Transfer Tax on the Deed

There is no exemption to claim in Indiana because there is nothing to be exempt from. What replaces the tax is a disclosure filing, and the definition it hangs on is the interesting part. The Department of Local Government Finance's instructions quote the statutory term directly: "CONVEYANCE" "means any transfer of a real property interest for valuable consideration. (IC 6-1.1-5.5-1) A transfer of property for no consideration or rerecording a prior transaction to correct an error is NOT considered a conveyance" for these purposes. A deed to your own LLC given for nothing at all is worth measuring against that sentence before you assume the full filing and its fee apply. The auditor's office is the one that applies it, and it is a five-minute phone call.

Where a fee is due, the DLGF instructions say "A person filing a sales disclosure form marked only with sales conditions subject to a disclosure filing fee shall pay a fee of ten dollars ($10.00) to the county auditor." One caution about that figure, stated plainly because we could not resolve it: a DLGF legislative-changes memo referenced elsewhere indicates the fee rose from ten dollars to twenty effective 1 July 2021, and we could not reach IC 6-1.1-5.5-4 itself to settle which is current. Either way it is a flat charge that has nothing to do with the value of the property. Confirm the amount with the county auditor rather than with any page, including this one.

Because there is no tax on the instrument, the machinery that catches landlords elsewhere never starts. Whether an assumed mortgage counts as taxable consideration is a question that only exists where the conveyance is taxed on consideration; in Indiana there is no such base. Indiana likewise has no controlling-interest tax reaching a transfer of membership interests in a company that holds real property, because there is no underlying deed tax for such a provision to backstop. Selling the LLC and selling the building are the same at the state deed-tax level: nothing.

A note on sourcing that applies to several sections of this page. iga.in.gov, the General Assembly's own host and the publisher of the Indiana Code, is a client-rendered application that served a 691-byte shell reading "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app" to every request we made, and its API rejects unauthenticated calls. The statutory language above therefore comes from the DLGF's own instructions PDF on in.gov, which quotes IC 6-1.1-5.5-1 directly, rather than from the code section itself. The negative on the transfer tax rests on the Department of Revenue's list of administered taxes, which is an agency enumeration rather than a statute saying no such tax exists.

in.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in Indiana?

No. Indiana does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

Indiana values on a cycle and by annual adjustment to market data, and nothing in that process is triggered by a deed. The DLGF describes it as a system in which "each year real property sales data is used to determine if the value of properties in your area should change to match the market value found in the sales of recent properties," replacing the older regime where "property was reassessed every 5 to 10 years." On the physical side, "Starting July 1, 2026, assessing officials will reassess approximately 25% of the parcels in their jurisdiction each year over a four-year timeframe." A conveyance between you and your own company does not start a cycle or pull a parcel forward in one.

The homestead standard deduction is where the LLC question has a genuinely non-obvious answer in Indiana, and it is the opposite of what most owners expect. Form HC10, prescribed by the DLGF under IC 6-1.1-12-37, defines a homestead as "an individual's principal place of residence" that the individual owns, is buying under a recorded contract, occupies as a cooperative tenant-stockholder, holds through a qualifying trust, or that "is a residence owned by a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, or other entity and the requirements of IC 6-1.1-12-37(r) are met."

The certification block on the form even lets a claimant tick that they "Am (are) the shareholder, partner, or member of the entity that owns the property." So entity ownership is not automatically fatal here. What is fatal is renting the place out: "No portion of a residential dwelling that is income-producing is eligible for the homestead standard deduction."

Two qualifications. We did not read IC 6-1.1-12-37(r) itself, because of the iga.in.gov problem described above, so this page records that the condition exists without stating what it requires, the county auditor administers the deduction and can say. And the deduction is on its way out regardless: the form sets the allowance "For assessment dates after December 31, 2024: in 2025, $48,000; in 2026, $40,000; in 2027, $30,000; in 2028, $20,000; in 2029, $10,000; and beginning with the 2030 assessment date and for each assessment date thereafter, $0." Whatever is at stake here shrinks every year and reaches nothing at the end of the decade.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: IC 6-1.1-12-37, in.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in Indiana

1. 1

   Ask the county auditor whether your deed is a 'conveyance'

   The sales disclosure filing hangs on IC 6-1.1-5.5-1's definition, under which a transfer "for no consideration" is not a conveyance for these purposes. Whether a deed into a wholly owned LLC falls inside or outside that turns on how the transfer is documented, and the auditor is the office that applies it. Ask before drafting, not at the counter.

2. 2

   Get written consent from your servicer

   Indiana's lack of a deed tax has nothing to say about your loan. Conveying title is what a due-on-sale clause is written to catch, and the Garn-St Germain list of protected transfers covers inter vivos trusts, not limited liability companies. A written consent obtained beforehand is a document you can point at; a phone call after recording isn't.

3. 3

   Decide between separate companies and a master company before you file anything

   A master limited liability company is organised on its own Secretary of State form and costs more at the front end than an ordinary Indiana LLC, and each series then needs its own articles of designation. Converting later is harder than starting that way: under Ind. Code § 23-18.1-3-2(b) the articles amendment authorising series "is not effective unless the amendment is adopted by unanimous consent of the members."

4. 4

   Record the deed and file the disclosure form with it

   The auditor may not accept a conveyance if the sales disclosure form isn't included with the conveyance document, so the two travel together. Confirm the current filing fee with the auditor rather than relying on a published figure, the instructions and a later legislative memo disagree, and we couldn't reach the statute to settle it.

5. 5

   Update the local rental registration within thirty days

   Where the city or town runs a programme under Ind. Code § 36-1-20, the statute contemplates updated registration information "not later than thirty (30) days after the change of ownership." A deed to your own LLC is a change of ownership. Nothing in the recording process prompts this, which is why it is the step most often missed.

6. 6

   Re-paper the leases, the insurance and the tax registrations

   The named insured on a landlord policy and the record owner disagreeing is a problem discovered at claim time, not at renewal. If the property is let short-term, the retail merchant registration for sales tax and county innkeeper's tax belongs to the entity now receiving the rent, and a marketplace collecting on platform bookings doesn't cover anything you book directly.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

Indiana authorises series LLCs, and a series can be filed with the state in its own right.

Indiana built its series regime as a separate article of the Code rather than as a clause inside the LLC act, and it uses vocabulary you will not meet elsewhere: Ind. Code art. 23-18.1, "Series Limited Liability Companies," calls the parent a "master limited liability company."

The shield at § 23-18.1-5-1(a) is a chain of five conditions, and all five have to hold: the operating agreement must so provide; the operating agreement must establish or provide for establishing one or more series; "The records maintained for the series account for the assets associated with the series separately from the other assets of the master limited liability company and any other series"; notice of the limitation on liabilities must be "set forth in the articles of organization of the master limited liability company"; and the master company must have "filed articles of designation for each series that is to have limited liability under this section." Section 23-18.1-6-2 confirms that "The existence of the series begins upon the filing of the articles of designation with the secretary of state." Until that filing there is no wall, whatever the operating agreement says.

The mechanics are real and the forms exist: the Secretary of State's State Form 56271, "Articles of Designation," cites Ind. Code 23-18.1 on its face, and a master company is organised on its own form, State Form 56269, rather than on the ordinary articles of organization. Two things follow that landlords should price in. Organising as a master company costs more than organising an ordinary Indiana LLC, so the structure carries a premium at the front end as well as a filing for every series. And converting an existing company is not a paperwork afterthought, under § 23-18.1-3-2(b) an amendment to the articles authorising series "is not effective unless the amendment is adopted by unanimous consent of the members." A single dissenting member of a family LLC ends the plan.

The recordkeeping condition is the one that fails in practice, and Indiana at least tells you what will satisfy it. Section 23-18.1-5-2(b) treats records that identify a series' assets "by: (1) specific listing; (2) category; (3) type; (4) quantity; (5) computational or allocational formula or procedure, including a percentage or share of any asset or assets; or (6) any other method under which the identity of the assets is objectively determinable" as accounting for those assets separately. That is a permissive list, and it is still a permanent obligation rather than a formation step, one bank account collecting the rent from every property is the usual way the whole structure quietly stops working.

in.gov

What Creditors Can Reach, What the Indiana Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

Indiana's LLC act contains no exclusive-remedy provision.

Read Ind. Code § 23-18-6-7 in full, because its length is the finding: "(a) On application to a court with jurisdiction by a judgment creditor of a member, the court may charge the interest of the member in the limited liability company with the payment of the unsatisfied amount of the judgment with interest. (b) To the extent the court charges under subsection (a), the judgment creditor has only the rights of an assignee of the member's interest in the limited liability company. (c) This article doesn't deprive a member of the benefit of any exemption laws applicable to the member's interest in the limited liability company." That's the whole section. Three subsections.

What is in it: a court may charge the member's interest, and a creditor who obtains a charging order gets the rights of an assignee, an economic interest, not management. What isn't in it, and this is the part worth stating precisely rather than glossing: there's no clause saying the charging order is the exclusive remedy, no provision authorising or prohibiting foreclosure and sale of the charged interest, and no mention of a single-member or sole-member company anywhere. Indiana neither closed the door on other remedies the way an exclusivity clause does, nor opened one the way the states that expressly permit foreclosure have. It said neither thing.

That matters because the two most common descriptions of Indiana LLCs online are both wrong in the same direction. One treats the charging order as an exclusive remedy by default; the other treats the sole-member carve-out found in the newer uniform acts as if it were general law. Indiana's LLC act isn't one of those acts, and § 23-18-6-7 is a shorter and older provision. What a court does with a silence isn't something this page can tell you, and we're not going to guess. Sourcing caveat: the section text was read on a mirror because the General Assembly's own host won't serve code text without JavaScript.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a Indiana attorney.

Authority: Ind. Code § 23-18-6-7, codes.findlaw.com

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in Indiana as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in Indiana is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in Indiana does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does Indiana Make You Register the Rental?

Not at the state level. Indiana runs no statewide rental registry, so registration is a municipal question, and what a municipality may require varies, in some states a city can impose an annual licence with an inspection, and in others state law caps or forbids local registries outright. The LLC does not change the answer either way: the duty attaches to the rental unit, not to the form of the owner. Check with the city or county the property sits in.

Indiana's only statute on rental registration is a limit on what local government may do, which is itself the evidence that the requirement is local. Ind. Code § 36-1-20-5 lets a political subdivision impose "on an owner or landlord of a rental unit an annual registration fee" of "not more than five dollars ($5)," and exempts from that cap any "political subdivision with a rental registration or inspection program created before July 1, 1984."

The clause that actually bites on the day you record the deed is the update duty: the section contemplates requiring a new owner to "provide updated registration information to the political subdivision not later than thirty (30) days after the change of ownership." Deeding the property to your own LLC changes the owner of record. Where a local programme exists and imposes that duty, the clock starts at the deed, and nothing in the recording process will remind you.

codes.findlaw.com

If You Rent Short-Term in Indiana

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

Two taxes ride on an Indiana short-term stay, and both are the state's rather than a dedicated lodging levy. Sales Tax Information Bulletin #41 opens by putting the rental of accommodations inside the sales tax: it "applies to the rental of rooms, lodgings, camping space, or other accommodations in Indiana furnished by any person engaged in the business of renting or furnishing such accommodations for periods of less than 30 consecutive days," and says such persons "must register as retail merchants and must collect sales tax from their customers."

On top of that sits the county innkeeper's tax, which the Department describes as "a county tax on the rental of rooms and accommodations for periods of less than 30 days" that is "in addition to state sales tax" and reaches "Houses, apartments, condominiums or other personal residences available for rent." The cut-off is the same for both and it is clean: "An accommodation that is rented for 30 consecutive days or more is not subject to the sales tax," and "CIT does not apply when renting for 30 or more days."

Platforms carry the duty for both, and Indiana wrote it in language that forecloses the usual argument: "A marketplace facilitator is required to collect and remit the sales tax and any county innkeeper's tax on behalf of their sellers. This cannot be contracted away." That last sentence is the difference between Indiana and states where the platform's obligation can be shifted by agreement.

One Indiana relief is worth knowing if you let rooms in your own home rather than a separate rental. Both taxes fall away where at least one owner "maintains the house, condominium or apartment as the owner's primary personal residence," the owner "rents or furnishes rooms, lodgings or other accommodations in the residence for fewer than 15 days in the current or preceding calendar year," and the payments qualify under IRC § 280A(g). Note the sting in the tail, though: "All transactions for periods of less than 30 days that utilize a marketplace facilitator are subject to CIT." Listing those few days on a platform brings the county tax back.

A platform collecting the state tax does not always cover every local tax on the same booking, and it never covers a booking taken directly. If you take reservations off-platform as well, that is where the exposure sits.

Authority: Ind. Code § 6-2.5-4-4; Ind. Code § 6-2.5-2-2; Ind. Code § 6-9, in.gov

Who to Ask in Indiana

The county auditor is the office that matters most in an Indiana conveyance and the one most owners have never called. It is the auditor who "may not accept a conveyance" without the sales disclosure form, who takes the disclosure fee, and who administers the homestead standard deduction, including the entity-ownership condition in IC 6-1.1-12-37(r) that this page deliberately does not paraphrase. The county recorder then records the deed itself. The county assessor handles valuation and the annual adjustment cycle.

At state level, the Department of Local Government Finance publishes the sales disclosure form instructions and Form HC10, and the Department of Revenue publishes Bulletin #41 and the County Innkeeper's Tax Guide, both as PDFs on in.gov that serve reliably. For the city or town, the local clerk or code enforcement office is where any rental registration under Ind. Code § 36-1-20 lives, including the thirty-day update after a change of ownership. One practical warning if you go looking for the Indiana Code yourself: iga.in.gov will not render statute text without JavaScript, so a browser is required and command-line tools return an empty shell.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other Indiana LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in Indiana →

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